Inside Out (Rhoades)

Front Row at the Movies

Disney’s Pixar Goes Mental With “Inside Out”

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Ever wanted to look inside a preteen’
s head? Scary thought, huh?

Well, not really … when Pixar takes you on this animated tour of an 11-year-old girl’s brain. You see, Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) hears voices inside her head. But don’t worry … we all share these noisy emotions: Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. Here, they are voiced respectively by Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith.

No need to call a shrink.

Well, not until Sadness and Joy get lost in the deeper recesses of Riley’s mind.

You see, the girl is struggling to adjust to a new city, to a new house, to a new school. So it’s not surprising that her emotions are in revolt.

“Inside Out” is playing its mind games at the Tropic Cinema. You can catch it in 3D or 2D, depending on your whim.

Having usurped all the popular fairy tales (“Snow White,” “Cinderella,” “The Little Mermaid,” et al.) as well as the Marvel superheroes (Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, and others), Disney now is taking over Sigmund Freud.

In this fanciful attempt at armchair psychoanalysis, we explore such imaginative territories as Long Term Memory, Imagination Land, and Dream Productions.

And we meet some interesting inhabitants like Forgetter Paula and Forgetter Bobby, Dream Director, Subconscious Guard Dave and Subconscious Guard Frank, and Mind Worker Cop Jake.

This mental exercise was thought up by Pete Docter, who got to co-direct with Ronnie del Carmen as his reward for coming up with a unique concept for a movie (if you don’t count that trip through the body in “Fantastic Voyage”).

The nice thing about this for Pete Docter is he got to write off all those trips to his therapist as “research.”

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