Film review: It's emotion in motion with ‘Inside Out'

Pixar Animation Studios is so prescient about the tastes of the American people that the lead character in “Inside Out,” Riley, shares a name with reigning NBA MVP Stephen Curry’s daughter (and meme sensation).

The film is a few days in the life of an 11-year-old girl as experienced by the anthropomorphized emotions running the control center of her mind. The most prominent of her feelings are Joy and Sadness (the well-paired voices of Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith). One speaks in exclamation points: “Let’s review today’s top five daydreams!” and the other in teardrops: “Goodbye friendship, hello loneliness,” as they lock into casual battle for control of Riley’s days. Joy carefully guards the happy, yellow orbs of the core memories while Sadness stands by to turn them blue.

From the control center, Riley is supplied with fond reminiscences from the archipelago of her personality, which ranges from Family Island to Hockey Island. But in the flux of a cross-country move, Joy and Sadness are sucked into the vast warren of long-term memory (a la Augustus Gloop whisked out of the chocolate river in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”). This leaves Riley’s mind in the hands of her other emotions – Fear, Disgust and Anger – which results in a kid only able to use phrases found in the comments section of Fox News articles.

We pay Pixar for sequences of creative brilliance and “Inside Out” has a great one. Joy and Sadness get trapped in Riley’s abstract thought and their bodies devolve from fully-realized 3D animations to Picassos to basic shapes to simple squiggles. And so there is a dazzling wonder about the film, even though its central theme is a resignation to the melancholy passage of time.

Adults will leave the theater aching with nostalgia, all their yellowed memories now touched with blue, pondering how it will work in the sequels when Riley starts antidepressants. How gaily-colored might Prozac Island be?

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“Inside Out” is showing at the Sebastiani Theatre. Rated PG. Running time 1:34. Visit http://www.sebastianitheatre.com.