Imaginative and insightful

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2016)

I may be going out on a limb here, but it's probably safe to say that "Inside Out" is the first mainstream animated feature film to be entirely centered around a seriously depressed child.
The reason Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is so depressed is that the personified emotions - Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Anger (Lewis Black) - that are responsible for keeping her psyche running smoothly have been seriously flubbing up of late. So much so that Riley runs the risk of experiencing a full mental breakdown if the emotional team can't retrieve all the core happy memories from Riley's childhood that are rapidly slipping away.
Imaginatively conceived by Pete Docter, Meg Lefauve, Josh Cooley and director Ronnie del Carmen, "Inside Out" takes place in two entirely distinct realms: first, in the "real" world, where a young girl has been dragged by her well-meaning but oblivious parents (Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Lane) from Minnesota to their new home in San Francisco; and, second, in the complex inner workings of said child's brain - a place filled with personality islands and memory balls all operated by the aforementioned Emotions from a giant console.
Rare for a movie aimed primarily at children, "Inside Out" is psychologically astute in its observations about human nature while remaining fanciful and childlike in tone and attitude. It explores the things that really matter to a youngster who's suddenly been yanked from a world where everything is comfortable and familiar to one where everything is unsettling and strange. The movie also points out how even the most well-intentioned of adults often fail to take into account children's very real feelings at crucial moments in their lives.
On a technical level, "Inside Out" comes replete with all the visually stunning graphics, fast-paced storytelling, and outstanding voice work that we've long associated with any computer-animated feature produced by Pixar Studios. But it's the less tangible elements of heart and imagination that truly count in this work.