I’VE GOT JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY – DOWN IN MY HEART: Eleven-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias, not shown) conjures up five figures that represent her emotions that are struggling to control her adjustment to being suddenly uprooted from her home in Minnesota to move to San Francisco with her parents. Joy (Amy Poehler), shown here, is constantly having a dialogue with the other four emotion avatars Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust to help Riley adjust to her new life on the west coast. (© 2015-Disney/Pixar)

Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) was distraught when her mother (Diane Lane) and father (Kyle MacLachlan) suddenly told her that the family was relocating from Minnesota to San Francisco. After all, she was leaving behind her home, her hockey team, and all her friends.

So, it’s no surprise that the uprooted 11-year-old feels lonely after moving to the Bay Area. And, as a consequence she does a lot of soul searching as she attempts to sort out her emotions — literally and figuratively.

With her active imagination, her feelings aren’t merely metaphysical experiences, but five actual little entities that live inside her brain. This anthropomorphic quintet, named Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), are constantly contending for control of Riley’s moods as she struggles to adjust to her new house, city, and school.

That internal conflict is the subject of Inside Out, the best animated film from Pixar since the balloon adventure film Up (2009). Don’t allow the premise about a melancholy child who’s having emotional problems adjusting to her new surroundings keep you from seeing this movie, because the material is handled delicately enough to be appropriate for a child of any age.

The picture is a touching tale that shows how a dramatic change in somebody’s life might temporarily affect a person’s psyche.

Excellent (****). Rated PG for action and mature themes. Running time: 94 minutes. Distributor: Pixar Animation/Walt Disney Studios.