A dramatic representation of emotional growth.- ***1/2

Bright colors and vibrant animation belie the story that is told from inside the head of girl who is challenged to cope with a major change happening with her family while on the verge of puberty.  This new Pixar animation can challenge young people's minds and will put them face to face with their own emotions.

The story is simple.  It is about a girl and his family coping with moving to a new city.  The real journey happens inside the head of Riley, the daughter, as she goes from mental happiness to emotional turmoil as she tries to adjust to her new environment. The story is told through 5 main emotions housed inside what they call as the headquarters.

This movie brilliantly succeeds at transforming emotions into real people talking inside our heads and a re-imagining of our mind set into animation.  It managed to summarize ideas from general science, psychology, biology regarding the mind and translate them into what I term as mental landscape but animated.  It treads on the idea that  we are a summary of all our memories and that our personality is based on experience and a little instinct.

This was a nice film except that to me it was difficult to watch.  It was difficult to see Riley change from a being happy girl to someone who is withdrawn and numb.  Because everything inside her head was represented by actual objects and persons it became more tragic to see her breaking down as if a whole city is being torn down.  Everything is sort of magnified that way and thus while she seems fine on the outside you see her world crumbling from inside and that to me is very tragic.  It took a long time for me to recover from this film as it was to me really sad.

It's a good film, but get ready to cry.