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14 UCW JULY 8-14, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Well that's Pixar for you. Go in looking for light-hearted children's entertainment; come out ready to ask your doctor for that Prozac pre- scription you've been meaning to get. The darker undertones of Inside Out (94 minutes) should come as no surprise for fans of Pete Docter's other emotionally manipulative tearjerkers, but if it's a weeper, at least it's a high qualit y weeper. Nonetheless, I still haven't forgiven him for the first five minutes of Up. A girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is born. At that moment, the mental personification of Joy (Amy Poehler) manifests and begins collecting memory bubbles in Headquarters. Over time, Joy is joined by personifications of Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). These emotional avatars take turns control- ling her reactions via console and collecting memory spheres, each color coded to cor- respond to a particular emotion. The introductions cover Riley's youth and the formation of five personalit y islands based on her "core" memories; family, friendship, honest y, hockey and goof ball. W hen Riley turns eleven, her family relocates from Minnesota to San Francisco. The transition is rough, and it doesn't get any easier when she finds out that in San Francisco, all the pizza is cov- ered in broccoli. Having visited San Francisco I would like to point out that is a bit of stretch — some of the pizza is covered in arugula. The emotional avatars do their best to keep Riley balanced in the face of change, but Joy is a bossy-boss, leaving no room for any other emotion to carry more than temporary responsibilit y. It's kind of irritating, like those friends who feel compelled to drown you in cheerfulness the moment you express a negative emotion. Like, stop telling me to have a more positive at titude Joy; did it ever occur to you that I like giving the one-fingered salute to people who cut me off ? Any way, Joy's insistence that Riley avoid any emotions she deems nega- tive (sadness) results in a struggle over some memory balls destined for the islands of personalit y. During the struggle, the core memories are lost and the personalit y islands are shut down; in the process, Joy and Sadness are sucked into long-term memory storage with few options on how to get back to Headquarters and restore the core memory balls to restart the personalit y islands. Anger, Disgust and Fear do their best to compensate for the loss of t wo basic emotions, but Riley is submerged in the kind of depression, fear, and self-loathing of which only teenage girls are truly capable. Her personal- it y islands begin crumbling, leaving Riley a complete emotional wreck. Let that sink in for a minute — her emotions go missing, her personalit y begins to crumble and her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle McLachlan) view her transition from happy, bubbly, hockey player to emotional wreck as acceptable collateral damage from their move. Especially disturbing is the systematic dismantling of her richly imaginative fantasy life — her invisible friends (Richard Kind) dissolving as Sadness and Joy try franti- cally to escape the locked door of her subconscious, filled with the basic elements of terror (clowns!). Overall, in terms of logistics, the film apparently does an admirable job of providing a visual schematic of how memories work. Of course, I would expect no less from the mind that thought up 'Cupcake in a Cup.' There is one other really unique aspect of Inside Out — no villain. Films with no villain are few and far bet ween (The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh comes to mind), and seem mostly targeted to toddlers. This is a nice family movie with a happy ending, but not one I'll be rushing out to see again any time soon. Now playing at Patriot 14 + IMA X. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. 910.484.6200. What if Feelings Had Feelings? Inside Out (Rated PG) . by HEATHER GRIFFITHS ASK about our SUMMER iLASIK SPECIAL & FREE Consultation