Mind games

Inside Out, Pixar's latest venture, is a stunningly inventive and enjoyable ride through the mind

A joke doing the rounds of social media ahead of Inside Out's release described the new Pixar offering as such: Over the years, Pixar has animated feelings in the most unlikeliest of objects and places, and invented parallel universes where cars, robots and toys have feelings. Until, in 2015, Pixar went totally meta - to a land where "Feelings have feelings". The film is about Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Davis), an 11-year-old girl from suburban Minnesota, who moves with her parents to bustling San Francisco. There she joins a new school, tries out for the local hockey team and misses her old home. The bulk of the movie takes shape within the confines of Riley's mind, where primary feelings, quite literally, run the personality.

There are five at the Headquarters: Amy Poehler voices Joy, a hyper-active ball of sunshine, Phyliss Smith as Sadness, a bespectacled blue blob, Mindy Kaling as Disgust, a green vixen with long lashes, Bill Hader as Fear, a paranoid dweeb with a bow-tie, and Lewis Black as Anger, a miniature Hulk in red. Joy is at the helm of things and while others do contend for supremacy from time to time, it's by and large a team effort. Interestingly, even though Pixar is part of Disney now, there is no old-school sentimentality that exalts the heart. Pixar places the emotions steadfastly within the mind. (Though there seems to be no place for Reason, Jealousy or Conscience, either.)

With the five of them, we are taken on many psychedelic adventures in Pixar's gorgeously woven world - what can be termed as a cross between a laboratory and a fairyland. The emotions are not alone, around them stretches the vast landscape of Riley's infinite consciousness, full of other wondrous characters and machinations. Other characters include Bing Bong, an imaginary friend from Riley's childhood that is part elephant, part dolphin and part cat. He is now fading away in her long-term memory hall and weeps candies ("the caramels are delicious"). There are five islands of Honesty, Family, Hockey, Friendship and Goofball that dominate Riley's personality, and many different types of memories, coloured by their experiences. The Land of Imagination has tons of French fries, a Graham cracker house, and other marvels that took me right back to the part of my childhood spent happily with Enid Blyton's The Magic Faraway Tree. There's a train of thought that puffs away at regular intervals but stops when Riley goes to sleep, when a dream factory comes to life.

Joy and Sadness are often hilariously at odds; while Joy delights in the trophy room in the Land of Imagination, Sadness pitifully picks up the participation memento. But the movie illustrates beautifully how it's all right, even positive, to let sadness take control sometimes.

Director Pete Docter's storytelling is so brisk that we are caught up in a whirlwind of emotions. The overall feeling that Inside Out gave me is less a journey through an 11-year-old girl's mind and more of clever adults theorising on the mania that goes on behind the crania. And maybe that's why the biggest laughs come when we exit Riley's head and take a look inside others. For instance, during a dinner time scene, her father's emotions are miles away - all of them are watching a hockey game, while the mother's emotions stare wistfully at a dashing former suitor. When the credits roll, the director lets loose a party of gags, and we get to peek inside the mind of a cat, a dog, a pre-pubescent boy ("Girl! Girl! Girl!" the sirens sing out). However, whether you're old or young, a Pixar movie knows just how to tug at your heartstrings.