Release Year: 2015

Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy

Director: Pete Docter

Writer: Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie del Carmen

Stars: Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black

Admit it: Sometimes, you hear voices.

They tell you not to eat that third piece of birthday cake. They tell you to definitely eat that seventh slice of pizza. They remind you that "Tearin' Up My Heart" is still (secretly) your favorite song ever, and that if you want to be on time for soccer practice, you really should get up right. Now.

Inside Out is all about the voices in 11-year-old Riley Andersen's head. The film, produced by Disney-Pixar, takes a deep dive into Riley's noggin to examine the role that our emotions play in why we are the way we are.

There's no bad guy, just Riley's five personified emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear—teaming up to restore order to Riley's mental world as she deals with a difficult cross-country move and inches closer to her tumultuous teenage years.

This isn't your average animated kiddie flick (obviously). It's what studio heads, critics, and your pretentious cousin Connor (the first-year film student) call "high concept," yet it manages to remain completely accessible—to everyone.

Inside Out hit U.S. theatres on June 19, 2015, raking in $90,440,272 and opening at #2 behind a little arthouse film called Jurassic World. It would go on to earn $857,611,174 worldwide and scoop up the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. (Source)

While its storytelling is rich and moving, it probably didn't hurt that Inside Out's voice-acting cast is a comedy dream team that includes Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, Phyllis Smith, and Lewis Black. That's comedy gold right there.

Inside Out is the third Pixar flick directed and co-written by Pete Docter, the guy who brought us Monsters, Inc. and Up. As anyone who sobbed through the first five minutes of Up will tell you, he's no stranger to combining a hearty laugh with a lump in the throat.

Inside Out takes complex brain science and wraps it up in a user-friendly package that appeals to both kids and their parents. You don't watch Inside Out for the science, though—or at least we hope you don't get your science from animated movies. Kids dig the vibrant world of Riley's brain and the colorful cast of characters who populate it.

Adults, meanwhile, can appreciate the poignant portrayal of childhood's end—and hedge about whether those were tears or just "allergies" they had at the end of the movie. It's a film about what it means to be young, what it means to be a grown-up, and what happens when you realize the best of times is now.

If we surveyed 100 people, Family Feud style, about what they remember most about their childhoods, here's what we predict the top five answers on the board would be:

• Their best Christmas ever
• Throwing water balloons filled with pudding at that old abandoned shed
• Peanut butter and okra sandwiches with the crusts cut off
• The way Dad would "do the voices" when he read Dr. Seuss
• That time they barfed at Disney World

Here's what we predict wouldn't make the list—not even close:

• The heart-wrenching poignancy of it all

But that's what Inside Out is all about.

Poignancy—kind of a mashup of sad and deeply moving—comes from the awareness that everything has an expiration date. That awesome vacation in Alaska. That delicious carton of eggnog in the fridge. The Office. Your life. At some point, they're all going to end.

Too dark? Here's a video of a one-day-old sea otter snuggling with its mom to lighten the mood.

Okay, back to work.

Inside Out addresses the powerful poignancy of childhood, the sort of significance that only comes with loss. Little kids don't experience poignancy. It's too complex, and little kids live in the moment. When they're having the time of their lives in the pool, they're not thinking about the fact that summer's going to end.

Teens and adults sure do, though, and Inside Out sees Riley evolve from a carefree kid into a young adult who starts bidding farewell to her childhood.

Over the course of the film, her memories of Minnesota begin to morph. What were once purely happy recollections of frozen ponds and hanging with her BFF Meg become tinged with sorrow, as Riley experiences the very grown-up feeling of nostalgia.

Minions, this is not. (No offense, Stuart and Dave.) Inside Out tells kids that it's perfectly okay to be sad sometimes. It relieves the enormous pressure we put on the pint-sized members of our family to be Mom and Dad's happy little girl or boy 24/7, and it shows them that not only is it okay to be sad sometimes—it's actually good for you.

Asking for help, communicating, and having a good cry from time to time are healthy. We mean, where are all those tears going to go if we don't unleash the waterworks on occasion, right?

On second thought, don't answer that.

Inside Out is the rare kids film that deals with what happens when we stop being kids, and start appreciating the moment because we know it'll soon be history. Maybe that's why parents dig Inside Out just as much as their kids do.

The film manages to convey some pretty important emotional lessons without hitting us over the head with them. They're embedded in the story so seamlessly that we don't even realize we're in psychology class.