Meet the Little Voices Telling You to Leave the Theater

Rating: 1/10 (28 June 2015)

I am genuinely confused as to why people are calling this "Pixar's Best" or an original concept. Pixar has done far better than this and even the mediocre 'Brave' and 'Cars' are far better.
Not only is the concept of 'people controlling your brain' tired and used multiple times, they managed to make it even more boring. There is absolutely no nuance in this film. The characters, (joy, anger, fear, disgust, sadness), are a visual representation of their emotion. I mean seriously, do they understand subtlety at all? Anger literally catches on fire, sadness is blue, and joy looks like every boring same-faced cartoon princess. Not to mention none of the emotions look like Riley, the little girl. This is even more of a flaw when we later see the emotions in other characters heads, (Riley's parents, her teacher, etc.) who look just like the person whose brain they inhabit. Why would Riley be the only one whose emotions all look nothing like her? They took an old concept, made it incredibly literal, and then botched it up with inconsistencies.
Aside from the boring concept, this movie is way too complex and depressing for children. The plot is nearly nonexistent and the most constant thing throughout is joy and sadness attempting to get back to the control center of Riley's brain after being sucked out by accident. Other than that its all very dull and if it doesn't make you cry, you'll probably fall asleep. There are, from what I remember, no laugh out loud jokes. Way too much time went into world-building and showing off the various landscapes and rooms of Riley's mind for there to be any actual storyline. Everything felt extremely dragged out and joy and sadness ran into obstacle after obstacle trying to get back to the control center. Finally, Riley tries to run away and it just so happens that joy returns and fixes everything before she has the chance to get too far. Not only was it absurd for an 11 year old girl to try and take a bus back home, it was far too sad the way the whole thing was shown.
There were so many random characters introduced for 5 seconds which served no purpose other than to lighten the mood, and they failed at that too. Bing Bong the imaginary friend who was a furry pink elephant was out of place and his design was really uncreative. When he died, I honestly felt relieved not to hear his irritating voice any more. He had no personality or character development and therefore there wasn't any reason to feel sad when he died. Unles of course you're a little kid in which case the whole thing was way too heavy. Either way its a definite miss.
And for those saying only psychology majors can enjoy this movie, that's not true. I can't imagine anyone honestly liking this movie. Aside from the complete inaccuracy of anyone feeling only one emotion at a time, everything about this movie was casually ableist. The portrayal of depression as being something small and easily gotten over was incorrect and terrible. Even the advertisements ("Meet the Little Voices Inside Your Head") felt like an insensitive joke towards people with schizophrenia or other disorders who have auditory hallucinations.
Overall, I would not recommend this movie to anyone. Too depressing and confusing for kids, too boring and literal for adults, this movie is enjoyable by no one. Pixar did not please its intended audience, nor did it please the grown ups. The one redeeming factor was the animation, which was good but all the designs were so uncreative that good animation couldn't save it.