Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (19 June 2015)

After seeing the trailer for "Inside Out", I was pretty keen to see it. The movie looked like it had a lot of good ideas and all of the people working on the project who I knew about I like. This should have been a great movie experience for me, but instead, it was a disappointment.
After moving from Minnesota to San Francisco, eleven-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) has to adjust to a new life with the help of her emotions, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). When Joy and Sadness are accidentally purged from the control tower along with Riley's core memories, which make Riley Riley, the two have to find their way back. As Joy and Sadness try to do that, Fear, Anger, and Disgust are the only emotions Riley has left to control her.
In their journeys through Riley's brain back to headquarters, Joy and Sadness come across Riley's imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind), who helps them find their way through Riley's brain. Bing Bong was not introduced at any point before his reveal, so he just shows up out of nowhere without any buildup or previous mention. Then, he becomes one of the most important characters of the whole movie.
When it comes to the characters, most of them are understandably defined to one personality trait (happy, sad, scared, angry, etc.), but even the characters that aren't emotions don't have much personality to them. Riley has (as stated by the movie) five things that make her who she is, and the only one that really adds any personality is goof ball. Her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) are blank slates, their emotions are blank slates who somehow don't even show their one emotion, and even Bing Bong lacks any real personality.
Along with that, Joy's character arc makes little sense. She learns of Sadness's importance to Riley, but for all we know, Sadness has only done one thing right that helped Riley while Joy and the other three emotions controlling her seemed to be working for the most part. There was no lesson that really needed to be learned from the get-go of the story, because Sadness was only needed to solve the problem that she started in the first place.
The story elements are a lot of the same things over and over again. Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong try to get to the control center, but each time, their method of getting their is destroyed by the accidentally and unknowingly by an emotion or an exterior event, like Riley sleeping or the brain workers outside of abstract thought. Then, they have to try and find a way to start everything up again or find a new way to Riley's brain. It just goes on like that for an hour and thirty minutes.
Granted, there were some creative elements to the movie and some genuinely funny and emotional moments, but they were overshadowed by the larger problems the movie had. I'd say this is the worst Pixar movie I have seen, even worse than "Cars", and a great disappointment.