Review of Inside Out (2015) by Wayne K — 12 Sep 2017

Equal parts family comedy and heart-breaking human drama, Inside Out is exactly the kind of film Pixar has built its astonishing legacy on: Smart, funny, brilliantly inventive, gorgeous to look at and with a powerful emotional centre that holds it all together.

It's almost impossible to find any things that are truly wrong with it, it's just so complete. Voice acting, animation, story, design, ingenuity, all are top-notch, up there with the best the company's ever done.

Yes, even up a high as Toy Story. It's so fiendishly clever and consistently engaging that it does what any great film does, and that's take you on a journey. But it's not just a great film, it's an important one.

The issue of emotional balance has certainly been explored before, but rarely with such charm, effervescence and unexpected honesty. It will relate just as much to children and adolescents as it will to adults, and all with get different things out of it, but receive the same fundamental message.

That it's ok to be sad sometimes, to be angry or afraid, and that it's not in your best interest to try and stamp negative emotions out entirely, but use them to make something good. Joy is a relentless optimist, but she learns that you can't be happy about everything.

Sadness is permanently downtrodden, but learns to accept that she has just as much place in life as happiness does. The emotional pays offs are so satisfying and well deserved that I could often feel myself welling up at them.

But the serious stuff is more than balanced out by the humour, which is pin-point accurate and emerges out of realistic reactions and is purely character driven. When the credits rolled I was convinced that I had witnessed a work of genius, and I would implore everybody, no matter what age, to see this film as soon as possible, and be as entertained, warmed and moved by it as I was.