Inside Out

PLOT SUMMARY

Riley is from Minnesota and she has a special gift. Five of her emotions are personified and are manifested by characters. These are Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger and they come to life. These emotions call her mind ‘Headquarters’ and they, much in the manner of a crew controlling a spaceship, they subtly influence Riley's real-life decision making processes and memories too via a control panel. Riley’s memories are located in colored zones in her mind and are then dispatched into her , which are sent to her long-term memory around the time she goes to bed each night. The most important memories, known as "core memories", are housed in a hub in Headquarters and power five "islands" that each reflect a different aspect of Riley's personality. Joy takes charge of the emotions to keep Riley in a happy state, but she is uncertain of Sadness's purpose and keeps her isolated from the other emotions.

When Riley turns eleven years, her family moves to San Francisco, where her dad is posted with a new job. Perhaps disoriented with the shift in location, Sadness by mistake changes Riley's happy thoughts and memories into sad ones and events lead her to suddenly start crying in front of her new class. This forms a powerful impression on her and a new core memory – a sad one – is thus created. This sets off a chain reaction in her mind. Joy’s damage-control attempts to erase this classroom crying memory before it reaches the central part of Riley’s mind, but her struggle with Sadness over it leads to all the core memories being shunted from their hub and shutting down the ‘personality islands’ that together form part of Riley’s personality. However, before Joy can set things back into their right order, both she, Sadness and the other core member personalities are accidentally sucked into the storage area of Riley’s mind via the memory tube that sucks them right out of Headquarters, while they are laboring to set things right.

In the meanwhile, the well-meaning but unfortunately named Anger, Disgust, and Fear attempt to maintain Riley's emotional state in Joy's absence, but they accidentally cause her to distance herself from her family, friends, and hobbies. Consequently, her personality islands crumble and fall one by one into the Memory Dump, an abyss between Headquarters and the rest of Riley's mind where old memories are disposed and eventually forgotten. Anger eventually plants an idea to run away to Minnesota inside the control console, believing they can produce new happy core memories there. Meanwhile, Joy and Sadness run into Bing Bong (Kind), Riley's former imaginary friend who is desperate to reconnect with her. He tells them they can get to Headquarters by riding the Train of Thought. After exploring different areas of Riley's mind, the three eventually catch the train, but it becomes derailed when one of the personality islands falls.

Joy attempts to use a recall tube to return to Headquarters. As Riley prepares to board a bus bound for Minnesota, however, her last personality island falls and breaks the tube, sending Joy into the Memory Dump along with another personification when he tries to rescue her. While despairingly looking through fading memories, Joy discovers a sad memory that becomes happy when Riley's family and friends help cheer her up, causing Joy to realize Sadness's importance in creating empathy. Joy and Bing Bong find the latter's discarded song-powered rocket in the dump to escape, but Bing Bong, who realizes he is weighing Joy down, jumps out and fades away to allow her to reach the ledge above. Joy uses various tools from Riley's imagination to reunite with Sadness and return to Headquarters, where they find that Anger's idea has disabled the control console, rendering Riley apathetic. Joy lets Sadness take control, and Sadness succeeds in extracting the idea, prompting Riley to return home.

When Sadness reinstalls the now sad core memories, Riley breaks down in tears and admits to her parents that she profoundly misses her old life. As her parents comfort and reassure her, Joy and Sadness together create a new, amalgamated core memory that in turn creates a new personality island. After a year, Riley has adapted to her new home, and her emotions all work together to help her lead a happy life, with new personality islands produced by new core memories that are combinations of multiple emotions.

The 3D computer-animated fantasy comedy-drama released by Walt Disney Pictures has been receiving rave reviews. The movie has been loved by an audience of all age groups. Here are some reactions on the film on micro-blogging site Twitter.

Inside Out is a very emotional movie. I cannot be the only person who made that pun. I'm surprised it wasn't the tagline, cuz it's true.

— Mr. Enter (@MysteriousEnter) June 27, 2015

i saw inside out today and it literally changed my life. IT WAS SO GENIUS. a movie all about emotions and i sobbed like a baby

— camEEla cabeYo (@camilacabello97) June 22, 2015

Have you seen "Inside Out?" I did today. The movie was lovely, but the brief insight into a cat's emotional life was GENIUS.

— Kim Rhodes (@kimrhodes4real) June 22, 2015

Inside Out is a great movie that helps explain to kids (and adults) the complexities of human emotion as you age. Plus it's fun and funny.

— Emily V Gordon (@thegynomite) June 21, 2015

Yo @mindykaling just got out of #insideout & it's literally the best movie I've ever seen. Cried 4 times profusely. Laughed 200 times.

— Evan Goldberg (@evandgoldberg) June 21, 2015