A return to form for Pixar.

Rating: 9/10 (29 June 2015)

This movie was a hard sell. I liked the first sneak peek of the preview of this film, but I wasn't really feeling the other trailers and the marketing campaign overall. But to it's credit this movie is a hard movie to sell without spoiling anything.
I really enjoyed this film. I think Pixar found their groove back with Inside Out after misfires like Brave and the Cars franchise. But with that being said, what Pixar is great at is making movies, not just for kids, but for adults as well. The exterior of the films seem like for kids, but the interior has many layers and depth.
This film allows you to feel the emotions you see on screen, who are the emotions of a girl named Riley(Kaitlyn Dias). The whole cast is stellar, Joy voiced by Amy Poehler carries this film, I was very concerned if I can get on board with a character who is happy all the time throughout the whole film, but Poehler and her character manages to do so. Phyllis Smith is Sadness and she is terrific, I found her to be a tad annoying in the beginning, but she won me over. I liked the other supporting emotions, Mindy Kaling provides sassiness as Disgust and Lewis Black as Anger provides some humorous moments as well, but my favorite out of all is Bill Hader's Fear. He was great. The parents portrayed by Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan provide decent supporting roles.
How the creative minds of Pixar came up with this conceptually complicated film is beyond me. Give director/writer Pete Docter, who also wrote Wall-E and Up, credit where credit is due. The story is almost perfectly constructed. I say almost, because the beginning starts off so well and it's thrilling, just to see the concept become realized in just a few minutes kicked the film off in high gear. What bogged the story down a little is when Joy and Sadness end up getting lost within the large maze of Riley's brain/memory trying to get back into the control room. That is where the film looses some momentum. I didn't particularly love Richard Kind's Bing Bong, but he was my least favorite character of the bunch, but he is used very effectively, and to those who saw it, you know what I'm talking about. It's just a tiny nitpick but I just wish they allowed the idea to carry the film itself rather than have this middle act, again it wasn't a huge detriment, just a nitpick as it eventually picks up steam again.
This is Pixar's most ambitious and most subtly intelligent film yet. Not since Toy Story 3 have I enjoyed a film this much by them. Again, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but Pixar really knows how to tell a story. Yes they do have some misfires, but their track record is solid. I'm not the target demographic for these films, but they continue to turn up solid, dependable, and consistent entertainment.
This film hits the right notes on another level. The conceptual level this film operates on is a pleasure to watch on screen. This movie is very thought-provoking and is filled with awesome and clever metaphors that never gets complicated at all. It explains emotional states very well disguised as a kid's film and sends a great message that not just that everyone has emotions, but it cannot be one emotion all the time and every time, and each emotion has it's place. It's an easy film to relate to, and to be honest I sincerely believe that adults might enjoy this film a little more than kids. Inside Out is easily in Pixar's top five or ten list.
9/10