It's customary for any new Pixar release to arrive with extreme levels of hype leading to people claiming it's one of the studio's best, but with Inside Out it's wholly justified - it really is this good. The idea of a person being controlled by little people inside their head has been presented in various forms over the years, but (like with toys coming to life or monsters under the bed) it's never been with such unrelenting scope or narrative purpose before. The Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind doesn't just state its idea and play with all the hilarious hijinks it offers up (it does that, but it's mostly reserved for credits montage), but uses it as an in to a story that could only be told inside the brain of an eleven year-old girl. What stands out most about the studio's latest is not just how relentlessly emotional is, but how subtle the concepts it's dealing with are. There's a maturity required to understand the central idea of finding the sadness in joy that can really only be taught over time, experiencing such realisations first hand, and yet Inside Out manages to make it immediately accessible to a wide audience. Get the tissues ready. The studio had been through a bit of slump thus far this decade, with even the best of their output not bothering the all-time classics, but now they're back with such awe-inspiring force the future can only look bright (even if that future does include more sequels than original projects).
