A new Pixar feature is always cause for celebration. INSIDE OUT comes from the mind of Pete Docter, the filmmaker who made MONSTERS, INC. and UP so I had high expectations for something great.

And the picture opens beautifully setting up the human world of Riley and her parents while simultaneously introducing the world inside Riley's head and her Emotions. Much like UP, it is a great blend of drama and humor and the picture is off and running. It is so good that you are expecting another Pixar masterpiece.

And then Joy and Sadness get lost inside Riley's head. And their journey back to Headquarters takes up quite a bit of the picture. And both Amy Poehler's Joy and this storyline wore out its welcome quite quickly. Joy and Sadness encounter a number of characters and face many obstacles and I just didn't care. I had a similar problem with all of the action in the middle of UP. It's as if Docter doesn't trust his story enough and has to throw in meaningless action in the middle of his films. But he doesn't. And he's not doing his film any favors here with Joy's journey.

INSIDE OUT is at its best when it cuts between the human world and the inside world as the characters have to make decisions and it's especially great when we see into other characters' heads too. This should have been the heart of the picture. Riley and her family have moved from Minnesota to San Francisco. So she has to go to a new school and make new friends. That's enough drama to hang the story on. Let's see how the Emotions navigate making a new friend or joining the hockey team. Instead we get meaningless action intercut with Fear, Anger and Disgust at Headquarters trying to figure out what Joy would do.

The voice cast is pretty solid here. I tired about halfway through of Amy Poehler's Joy, but that was as much the writing as it was her. Lewis Black as Anger steals every scene he's in. Bill Hader's Fear and Mindy Kaling's Disgust are quite funny. The rest do capable work. 

The last 20 minutes or so were engaging and the picture got back on track. But the resolution is pretty confounding. It's almost like something is missing in terms of solving Riley's trauma over having to live in this brand new place. 

The very end is brilliantly done and absolutely hilarious and it's this kind of material that the picture needed much more of. While I can't rank this with Pixar's best, it's got so much going for it that it ranks well above its worst and is definitely worth seeing. I just wish Docter and his collaborators had enough faith in their premise to stick with it and leave out all of the meaningless action.