Best movie I’ve seen this year, so far! Easily! I’ve been anxiously waiting for this movie since I first heard about it, in August 2013. I attended an event where a clip was shown and I was immediately hooked. So, even though “Inside Out” comes out in the U.S. on June 19, I was able to see an advance screening this week! And it did not disappoint me!

The premise of the movie is to “meet the little voices inside your head”, which I find interesting per se, especially since we are talking about an animated movie. So we are introduced to Riley: a 11-year-old girl from Minnesota who has to move to San Francisco with her family. How does Riley feel about that? Well, her emotions tell us! We meet Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith), Anger (voiced by Lewis Black), Fear (voiced by Bill Hader) and Disgust (voiced by Mindy Kaling). They stay in the brain’s “headquarters”, and they control every reaction Riley has thorough the day and organize her memories when she goes to sleep.

Joy tries to take control over almost everything and doesn’t let the other emotions in charge, especially Sadness. So, when Sadness touches a hardcore joyful memory and turns it into a sad one, things start to get a little messy inside Riley’s head. Joy tries to fix it, but she and Sadness end up being transported out of the headquarters and into the other parts of Riley’s brain, so the girl is left only with Anger, Disgust and Fear.

The movie is brilliant across the board: the script is original, the casting is perfect (Lewis Black really is the personification of Anger), the running time is adequate, the animation is beautiful, etc. It was a really smart move to show only 5 emotions, even though we have many more. It makes it simpler and smoother to watch. There is one thing about the script that worries me is how it’s going to be translated into other languages. What makes it brilliant is the number of words and expressions they play with, like “train of thought”: they put an actual train inside her head. This expression, however, is not the same in Portuguese, for example. So I believe the movie will lose a little bit when it gets translated, but it’s still extremely good.

Like most Pixar movies, it has a very strong connection to adult audiences, so probably children won’t get all the jokes and references, but their parents certainly will. It also shows us, beautifully, how we shouldn’t try to suppress any emotion, because every moment in our lives consist of different emotions and all those experiences shape us. This may seem obvious to adults, but it’s good to show it to children, who are the demographic Pixar is aiming. But adults can certainly enjoy the way it’s portrait.

This will probably be a big success for Pixar and it got outstanding reviews during the Cannes Festival last month. This is certainly good for the studio, since it had lost its touch in the last movies (don’t get me started on “Brave” and “Cars 2”…). The problems inside Pixar were evident last year, when the studio decided not to release “The Good Dinosaur” due to script problems. So 2015 will be the first year we’ll have two Pixar movies.

So, I’ll leave you with the trailer for “Inside Out”! Hopefully you’ll leave the theater as joyful as I did.

Related posts:

Review: The Good Dinosaur (2015) Review: Anomalisa (2015) Movie Review: Aloha (2015) Review: Room (2015)

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