[5]

Pixar usually moves me with some genuine human emotion, but Inside Out is a little more sentimental and pandering than many of their other films. The big cry moment is a cheap, low blow, is what I mean to say. And I hold a special kind of grudge against movies that make me cry by hitting below the belt (I’m talking to you, Forrest Gump.) But I get ahead of myself.

Inside Out is about the emotions in a twelve-year old girl’s head. They’re all incarnate as weird, little glowing geometric shapes — you get Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. They’re all kinda fun, especially Lewis Black as the voice of Anger. But then there’s Sadness, a mopey, useless little bitch that you just want to kick out of the movie right away. She brings everyone down and threatens to ruin everything at just about every possible turn. Turns out, though, that the whole damned movie is about the character I hate the most, and how important she is to our well-being. You know? Like, you can’t have true joy without sadness in your life and stuff? Inside Out is some real hippie shit.

With the voices of Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Richard Kind, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan.

Academy Award: Best Animated Feature Film

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Screenplay