Starring: Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Phyllis Smith, Rashida Jones, Kyle MacLachlan, and Diane Lane
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios / Pixar Studios
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2015
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This fascinating, animated movie is about the trials, tribulation, sadness, and joys of growing up. The film is based on an original idea by the movie’s director, Pete Docter (the Academy-Award director of “Up”, 2009), and is set within the mind of a young girl. The film is about a girl being guided by her emotions.
11-year-old Riley (Rashida Jones) moves from mid-western to west-coast USA, after her father accepts a new job in San Francisco. She experiences joy, fear, anger, disgust and sadness at the move – all, predictable emotions associated with her anxiety about coping with a new school, a new city, a new house, and a new home. Riley is being catapulted from a pleasant, comfortable life in Minnesota to an uncertain one in San Francisco, where she has no friends.
The emotions Riley experiences “live” inside her mind and they “advise” her on how to find her way through life. Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), which is Riley’s main emotion, tries to keep everything positive and happy, but Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) also live in her mind and they also express her emotions.
All five emotions reside in the part of Riley’s mind, called “Headquarters”, which is the control centre of her mind. Joy is responsible for Riley staying happy and tries to control Riley’s other emotions in as positive a way as she can. The emotions battle with each other, however, in their attempts to keep Riley functioning in the way they think they know best. There are core memories that identify Riley as a person. Joy knows that core memories shouldn’t ever be lost, and she thinks that Riley is in danger of losing them.
The difficulties associated with Riley adapting to her new life cause Joy to get lost in the chaos of what is happening, and Joy and Sadness are swept into the outskirts of Riley’s mind. Joy holds on to Riley’s core memories, which are contained in golden, translucent balls, and she tries to return them to Headquarters to influence Riley. While she is trying to get back to the control centre, the other emotions continue to quarrel among themselves about what to do about Riley functioning poorly at school and at home.
Most of the film concerns Joy’s struggle to get back to Headquarters, so as to rescue happiness for Riley. Riley, however, is sad enough to run away from home, and Sadness combines with Joy to make Riley’s memories a mixture of both happiness and unhappiness. Equilibrium is restored as Riley happily re-discovers, amidst the sadness that she also feels, the genuine, positive love of her anxious parents (Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane). And Joy has helped Sadness by showing her a more positive, and better, way of looking at life.
The style of animation in this film is highly unusual. Emotions are abstract concepts to portray, and Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen, the film’s co-directors, give a special texture to the appearance of the characters who depict them. Joy, for instance, is shiny and effervescent in the way she always looks. Anger is red, Sadness is blue, and Disgust is green.The world of the mind is bright and sharp, while the external world is textured somewhat differently and not as vividly coloured.
This is a movie that is very original. It turns emotions into characters and each character is imbued with an energy that conveys what emotions might look like to a young person. The film as a whole is an unique attempt to show emotional pain living side-by-side with positive feelings. For children, the film is an imaginative excursion into the discovery of who they are. For adults, the film tells them what they have grown out of, and left behind. As a a whole, the film is quite unlike any other fantasy movie that viewers are likely to have seen. The movie’s story-line is smart, though cognitively demanding; the quality of its animation is outstanding; and the movie has an excellent musical score.
Conceptually and imaginatively, this is a very challenging fantasy film that exposes the viewer creatively to the good and bad of growing-up. It is delightful, warm, funny, and humane, and reaches out inventively to adults and children, by arousing both memories and feelings.
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