Inside Out
4 Waffles!

It’s brilliant.

Amy Poehler provides the voice of Joy – the emotion of the same name that lives in the head of an 11-year old girl, Riley (Kaitlyn Dias). Joy and the other emotions – Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Anger (Lewis Black) – live inside Headquarters where each one rules Riley’s life at various times, while memories are collected and stored. As you can imagine, Joy has been in charge the most over the first 11 years, but all of that is about to change.

Riley’s family is up and moving from their idyllic paradise in Minnesota to live in San Francisco. While that is enough to confuse our young girl, life gets even harder when Joy and Sadness are accidentally sucked into Long Term Memory. As those two try to make it back to headquarters, Fear, Disgust and Anger are driving Riley to do something she will regret.

Inside Out is about as close to perfect as any movie can get. You will even forgive Disney for Tomorrowland after seeing this one.

It starts with the acting. Every voice performer is just what the doctor ordered for his or her role.

While it is a given Black would be the quintessential embodiment of Anger, he still surprises by delivering hilarious rage and a certain excitement for Anger’s role in the spectrum of emotions. Plus, the visual animation of his character and the changes he goes through while blowing his top will have you cheering and laughing for days after you watch Inside Out. It’s the best explosion of anger you have seen since The Hulk started to turn green.

Poehler wonderfully imbues Joy with the kind of spritely, pixyish spirit needed to make her everyone’s favorite character, and makes Joy a heroic figure with the best of intentions, while Hader and Kaling find a few moments to stand out even though they are supporting players in this tale.

However, it is Smith who is so amazing you can’t imagine any other actor tackling the role. You will recognize her as Phyllis from The Office, but her cadence and vocal tone combined with the animation makes Sadness the sneaky underdog you are rooting for in this movie. Watching her mood swings are reminiscent of being a mother or father to a teen girl, and feeling her desire to do good for Riley warms your heart, even as she might be making everything worse. Haven’t we all been there?

The animation is the best in movies today, while director/writer Pete Doctor and his co-writers Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley pave the way for all of it to be more than eye candy. Inside Out is not a special effects extravaganza like Jurassic World, but it creates its own special world with vivid locations and characters who come to life.

Inside Out is wildly imaginative as we go through the brain with visits to Long Term Memory, Imagination Land, the Subconscious and more. Kids will giggle at the silly adventures Sadness and Joy find themselves embroiled in, while adults can be amazed at the creativity needed to bring these places to life with an uncanny accuracy about that function of the brain and the characteristics the place has.

While everyone always asks me if there are jokes for the adults to appreciate, Inside Out will appeal to adults with its bigger themes about the complexity of emotions, the legendary heroic act of a character that will have you weeping, or the familiarity of watching the changes a family and a person goes through as we age. It’s all there without any preaching or need to smack you over the head with it. The brilliant writing and directing makes it all apparent and obvious.

I can’t wait to see Inside Out again.

Inside Out is rated PG for mild thematic elements and some action.