If you were one of the many people that cried into their popcorn at the first 10 minutes of Up, be warned, you’re going to need a crate full of hanky’s for Pixar’s latest classic Inside Out. After spending the last few years churning out charming, but disappointing, sequels Pixar have returned to what they do best: crafting yet another original film about with a distinctive spin on growing up growing up. Isn’t exactly new territory, the workplace comedy, and effect of childhood fears and memory fulling a society was first introduced in the excellent Monsters Inc. What Inside Out does, however, is take the germ of that idea and turn it into its best film since Up, a film that deserves to stand beside the Toy Story trilogy, Wall E, and The Incredibles.

Inside Out may be the most complex film Pixar has ever dared to attempt. It tells the story of Riley: an eleven year old girl who is both the films main character, and its main setting. Riley is inwardly governed, and maintained by literal personifications of her emotions. There’s Joy, played by Amy Poehler who harnesses her Parks and Recreation energy and turns it up to a thousand, Sadness, played by Phyllis Smith, who along with Mindy Kaling’s Disgust achieve the unofficial Parks and Rec/The Office crossover we all secretly wanted. Rounding out the crew are scene stealers Anger, played by Lewis Black, and Bill Hader as Fear. After Riley and her parents move to San Francisco, Riley becomes depressed and homesick due to Sadness well intentioned interference, and when Joy tries to reverse this they both find themselves lost in Riley’s mind. From there Joy and Sadness must find their way back to Headquarters, giving us a journey through the many corners of Riley’s mind.

Inside out is stunning, both visually, and emotionally, director Pete Docter and co-director Ronnie del Carmen, lead us through Riley’s dreams, here a Hollywood-like studio, complete with actors, scripts and Riley as the camera, her train of thought: a literal train carrying boxes marked fact and opinion which have a habit of getting mixed up with near constant visual flourishes that take your breath away. It’s in the little details: Anger is regularly scene reading newspapers with bad headlines relating to Riley, Fear calculates that one of the most likely threats on the first day at a new school could be quick sand, the heart rending fate of our imaginary friends, and that’s only scratching the surface of its charm. Inside Out will delight the kids, and destroy adults emotions, but in a good way.