Someone give Pete Docter an Oscar, please

Rating: 9/10 (7 August 2015)

We meet Riley when she is born. We also meet Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger, personifications of her emotions who live inside her head and contribute towards her memories – colour-coded globes which build into a library and a series of interconnected city-like structures which embody the key aspects of Riley's emotional growth. Her life is mostly happy until the family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco, and everything familiar which she loved is gone. The loss of what she loved leads to a crisis in Headquarters which leaves Joy, the sole positive emotion, fighting a losing battle to protect the fragile structures built up over Riley's 11 years.
This film is cleverly conceived and executed, carrying what is effectively two parallel and interlinked stories: Riley's struggle to cope with her drastically changed circumstances, and Joy's struggle to protect Riley's emotional history. The visual representation of this struggle is reminiscent of the sequences in Vanellope's race world in Wreck-It Ralph in terms of psychedelically coloured surrealism, but this is both imaginative and calculated to appeal to younger audience members. The Riley story will appeal to their parents.
In truth, this is a very ambitious film in terms of putting together an exciting, eye-catching action adventure which works on a fairly superficial level for the less sophisticated viewer, and some fairly high-concept stuff for the older viewer. It largely succeeds, and its conclusion – life is made up of both positive and negative, and we need both to be a fully realised individual – is gracefully presented.
Another winner from Pixar, and confirmation that Pete Docter is a genius.