If you haven’t seen it yet, go do it. Now. It’s the greatest movie I have seen, hands down, all year.

Like Jimmy V said, “If you laugh, you think and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.”

In this case, that’s a heck of a movie.

Now, mind you, I only watch a handful of movies every year. But watching Inside Out did for me what few other movies do – it held my attention all the way through. I have an admittedly short attention span and have a hard time getting into characters in such shorts amount of time. This begets my preference for episodic television shows where the character development can last over the course of, practically, years (can you say ‘Jack Bauer‘?).

It’s most interesting because you spend most of your time watching this movie in the head of the main character, Riley. As the adolescents  handles a move, as an only child, from the mid-west to the American west coast, she has many emotions and feelings – and that’s where the other main characters (pictured below) come into play. There’s Joy and Sad and Fear and Anger and they all work together in Riley’s “control station” (a.k.a. brain) to effect how she reacts to various situations.

Simply put: this movie is a beautiful, thoughtful, yet animated portrayal of emotion. It’s deep. It’s almost as if they consulted many psychologists to make sure they got it “just right.” There are references to so many terms that I learned in school, like REM sleep, that you wouldn’t normally see in a kid’s a movie – but they make so much sense and play a very intricate part in understanding the greater, more deep parts of the story as an adult.

I laughed, I teared up, I thought…and I continue to think…about how great of a movie this. Go check it out if you have the time.