The BRWC Review: Inside Out

19th July 2015

Inside Out is the family film of the year. It’s funny, innovative and intelligent in bringing to life those voices in your head: joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust in 93 glorious minutes.

Riley is a 11 year old girl whose family move from their midwest home to the bustling city of San Fransico and with the move comes getting to grips with a new house, friends and school. How will she cope? Well maybe if we could see what was going on in her head we might get a better idea. Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) have their hands full in making sure they keep her core memories alive whilst leaving room for new ones to form.

Pete Docter is the man behind Up, Monsters, Inc and Toy Story. Here he really takes a leap of faith and rather than focus on the exterior delves into the psyche and poses the universal question: what makes you you? Whilst we are all different there are a number of similarities not least that we are all ruled by our emotions. In order to make it relatable and not to physiological – emotions in Riley’s head live at headquarters. The core memories are islands so there is: friendship island, honesty island etc. Why do we remember some memories and not others? Why there are forgetters of course who remove redundant memories to make space for new ones as follows:

(Forgetter Paula) U.S Presidents?
(Forgetter Bobby) Keep Washington, Lincoln and the fat one

As with previous Pixar films such as Up and Toy Story, this is a film that children will enjoy on one level and adults will enjoy the wordplay. The colours are vivid and it’s intelligent whilst remaining easy for children to engage and understand the concepts it doesn’t seek to “dumb them down”. As with any animation the whole cast do such a wonderful job in breathing life into their respective emotions. If I had to choose Anger would be my favourite emotion especially when he rejoices at seeing curse word but disgust comes in a very close second.

Inside Out opens in cinemas on Friday 24 July and is a must see even if you are child free. You will leave having gone through a whole roller coaster of emotions but mostly joy after seeing this wonderful film.

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