Pixar films tell stories that see our world from a thought-provoking, alternative perspective. Inside Out is their latest offering, its title making the perspective-shift motif explicit: the film offers a window into the minds of its characters where their emotions and other mental functions are personified by cartoon characters. This gives the film two interwoven plots. The 'external' plot centres on eleven-year-old Riley, whose family relocates from Minnesota to San Francisco, and whose real-world disappointments, lack of parental emotional support and struggle to move on from her rapidly disintegrating childhood plunge her into a mental crisis.

Meanwhile, Riley’s emotions must deal with these troubling goings-on: initially these scenes depict the emotional effects of Riley's being embarrassed at school, or confronted with disgusting food, but before long the emotions become involved in a plot of their own. The odd couple of Joy and Sadness are accidentally evacuated from the control centre of Riley's mind, and must journey across a deteriorating mental landscape in order to return. The question of whether external events shape the mind or vice versa is, ingeniously, explored structurally by the way each plot affects the other.        

But replace 'Riley' with 'Andy' and how far are we from Toy Story? Joy and Sadness's quest across Riley's mindscape somehow feels like a less subtle version of Woody and Buzz's odyssey back to their beloved Andy. The great thing about Toy Story is that it explores psychology without this being explicit or moralistic. But because this theme is made explicit in Inside Out, it feels, ironically, like it has less going on below the surface.

The film has been praised for its communication of important psychological ideas to its audience. So what exactly is being communicated? The film follows Robert Plutchik's 'psycho-evolutionary' theory, which outlines how eight primary emotions – anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust and joy – have developed in all animals because they increase chances of survival. Its message is the importance of accepting sadness in order to achieve emotional maturity: Joy and Sadness must co-operate for healthy functioning. All films should take responsibility for the mental health and education of their audience, and we should admire Pixar for doing this. But the film mishandles other ideas, like psycho-analysis: the 'subconscious' in the film is satirised as a dungeon holding childhood fears of clowns.

So what are Pixar's priorities and what are we praising them for? Does Inside Out allow the complexity of adolescence to be constructively explored in mainstream cinema? Yes: the scene where Riley gets into an argument over dinner because she's upset about something she doesn't understand, and her dad's emotions are too busy watching a football game to notice, holds up the mirror to something we've all experienced. Though isn't it then the parents who need to be educated, not the kids? And since Pixar have to caricature these situations to make them work in a cartoon, they have to take advantage of stereotypes (disclaimer: mums can be emotionally incompetent too) – a necessary compromise? Would I feel patronised if I were a depressed thirteen year-old watching this with my parents? Maybe. Would it make them more sensitive to my feelings? Who knows.

This aside, the film wields Pixar's usual visual creativity and attention to detail: the distinction between the bright, exciting interior world, and the foggy, bleak exterior of San Fran is striking and effective. And everyone's mind has a different aesthetic, an opportunity too good to miss for Pixar's visual humour: Riley's mum's emotions sit sedately at a TV chat show desk; those of an awkward teenage boy cower by electric guitars in a dark room as a 'girl alert' siren flares. And you can feel the fun that went into constructing the geography of Riley's mind: Joy and Sadness take a tour through various fantasies (dream-boyfriend generator, cloud-town); the factory warehouse of Riley's long-term memory; and 'dream studios' – though the most striking and innovative is 'abstract thought', in which the characters are deconstructed into 3D polygons and then 2D shapes, with Pixar really playing with the actual medium of animation.           

Inside Out has been billed as a return to form for a studio which has lately been criticised for relying on sub-par sequels to past successes. But I feel that the film treads water about as much as it could, even if its makers didn't intend it to, relying on ideas carried out more effectively in Pixar's older releases. It lacks depth because it is about depth – though perhaps this is understandable, since it required some real innovation to make Inside Out work. It's a great film, and is better than anything else in cinemas this summer, maybe even this year – but Pixar, at their best, can shine much further, and much deeper.