485. Inside Out

Title: Inside Out
Genre: Comedy, Adventure, Animation
Year: 2015

Summary: A girl named Riley is born in Minnesota. Within her mind's Headquarters, there exist five personifications of her basic emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. The emotions influence Riley's actions via a control console. Riley's memories are stored in colored orbs, which are sent into long-term memory each night by a suction tube. Riley's most important memories, known as "core memories", are housed in a hub in Headquarters and power five "islands", each of which reflects a different aspect of Riley's personality. Joy always tries to keep Riley happy, and she and the other emotions try to prevent Sadness from using the console, not understanding her purpose.

When Riley is 11, her family moves to San Francisco. Riley is disappointed by their lifeless new home, and is further discouraged when the moving van with all their belongings gets lost. Joy starts worrying when Sadness begins touching Riley's happy memories, causing them to become sad, so she tries to keep Sadness isolated. However, on Riley's first day at her new school, Sadness causes Riley to cry in front of her class, creating a sad core memory. Joy tries to dispose of it before it reaches the core memory hub, but instead knocks the other core memories loose during a struggle with Sadness, destabilizing the personality islands. As Joy scrambles to collect the core memories, she and Sadness are sucked out of Headquarters by the memory tube into the maze-like storage area of long-term memory, taking the core memories with them.

Fear, Disgust, and Anger try to keep Riley happy, but inadvertently distance her from her parents, friends, and hobbies, causing her personality islands to crumble into the "Memory Dump", an abyss where fading memories are disposed of and forgotten. Believing that going back to Minnesota will make Riley happy again, Anger inserts an idea into the control console to cause Riley to run away to Minnesota. Meanwhile, in long-term memory, Joy and Sadness find Bing Bong, Riley's childhood imaginary friend. He tells them they can get to Headquarters by riding the train of thought. After exploring Riley's mind, the three eventually catch the train, but it is derailed when one of the personality islands collapses.

As Riley prepares to board a bus to Minnesota, Joy, desperate for Riley to be happy, abandons Sadness and attempts to use a "recall tube" to return to Headquarters, but the last personality island starts to collapse, breaking the tube and plunging Joy and Bing Bong down into the Memory Dump. At the bottom, Joy discovers a sad memory of a hockey game that becomes happy when Riley's parents and friends comfort her, causing Joy to realize that Sadness's importance is to create empathy in others when Riley needs help.

Joy and Bing Bong try to use Bing Bong's old wagon rocket to escape the Memory Dump, but after several tries Bing Bong realizes their combined weight is too much and jumps out, sacrificing himself to allow Joy to escape, then fades away. Joy goes to Imagination Land and uses various tools to propel herself and Sadness through the air to Headquarters. They find that Anger's idea has disabled the control console, rendering Riley numb andapathetic. To the surprise of the others, with Joy's encouragement, Sadness takes control of the console and successfully removes the idea, reactivating the console and prompting Riley to return home.

As Sadness re-installs the core memories, now blue, Riley arrives home and bursts into tears, confessing to her parents that she misses her old life in Minnesota. As Riley's parents comfort and reassure her, Joy and Sadness work the console together, creating a new core memory that combines their respective emotions. A year later, Riley is adapting to her new home, as her emotions now work together to help her lead a more emotionally complex life.