Inside Out (2015)

Inside Out is being recognized as the most thought-provoking modern Pixar classic of all time. I think that it is deserving of this title. The journey I was allowed to witness on screen with five personified emotions and a complex girl moved me. It was a fun film from start to finish but at the same time, it brought upon strong morals.

The story starts with the birth of Reilly, along with the birth of her emotions. The first emotion being Joy (Amy Poehler) and her key goal is to keep Reilly a happy girl no matter what. Unfortunately, for Joy, she is quickly accompanied by other emotions: Fear, Disgust, Anger (Bill Hader/Mindy Kaling/Lewis Black) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith)

Reilly’s experienced all these emotions on several occasions, but according to Joy, this is not good, especially when it involves Sadness. The somber blue being tended to make Reilly’s childhood have lots of moments of sadness, from simply being lonely to crying when things didn’t go her way. This is common behavior for all children to go through, but regardless, Joy attempts to give Sadness no use of the controls in Reilly’s head so that she can shine through.

This seems to work out well in Joy’s favor until a now 11-year old Reilly must move away with her parents to San Francisco and her negative emotions begin to take more effect. Though the preteen has trouble settling in and starting a new life, her inner emotion Joy still tries to overpower the others and keep her happy.

Eventually, after Sadness keeps touching a core memory (touching it will make it a sad memory) Joy and Sadness somehow get away from the ‘mind control’ room and only Fear, Disgust, and Anger are left to make up how Reilly acts. The two lost emotions must find their way back to the room in order to make Reilly feel happy and sad again. However, the longer they stay away, the more they realize that there is much more to lose than just her emotions.

When I first saw the trailer to this movie, I had an assumption made about the ending to this movie. “If Joy is trying to make everyone happy like her, then I suppose the other emotions will somehow come around and be happy like her” which lead me to question, “How can other emotions turn into one single emotion? That doesn’t seem to make sense”

Fortunately, the movie proved to me that, it indeed, did not make sense.

We need all our emotions no matter how much we don’t want to deal with them. The conflict between Joy and Sadness about how Joy doesn’t want Sadness to infect Reilly or her core memories is exactly how many people feel about themselves. They do not want to deal with sadness and push it aside, when really they should embrace their sadness. Mind you, the movie does not say to always be sad, but it doesn’t say to always be joyful either, too many of either could cause disaster.

But wait a minute, how can too much happiness be a BAD thing?

Again, the movie proved it could be by showing Joy as a never-ending ball of positivity, which when in conflict with someone who is upset over something, may not be the best idea. Joy showed she wasn’t truly listening to the person’s woes and always tried to cover up the sadness. What was really needed is Sadness to understand the other person and come to their aid.

This conflict shines through Reilly too as she attempts to cover up her emotions by being happy in front of her family when what she really needed to do is open up and talk to people about her problems so she can feel better.

This is basically the moral of the story: You need to express your sadness so you can feel joy.

Bottling up your emotions can lead to real life conditions like depression or even worse, feeling nothing. When you feel nothing at all; it’s not sadness, but having no regard for anything in your life. You don’t care what happens to you or anyone else; that’s the hardest condition to pull back from.

In my opinion, the movie does an excellent job of explaining this moral. Probably more than I can do in this critic, since it is such a complex topic to discuss. Everyone has their own perspective on how emotions work, however Inside Out brings one interpretation that I believe we can all understand. The mechanics in the control room in Reilly’s head was easy to comprehend and thus, an easy way to know how our personalities form from it.

The graphics were beautiful; the bright colors kept the audience’s attention. The main characters were enjoyable to watch and memorable, including Reilly, an example of all of us who have gone through rough times. The side characters were funny and likable as well, such as Reilly’s parents and her imaginary friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind)

The story was great and led up to a roller coaster of feelings and a very important moral that may we know it or not, we all need. It has taken the idea of seeing our own emotions to give a rare message to all moviegoers. It’s a kind of message that touched the hearts of many and will stick with them for a long time.

Side note: The short clip before the movie is called, “Lava” and it’s a story about a volcano who years for love for years and years as he sings for the volcano of his dreams. I honestly do not believe it is the best Pixar short, since I didn’t enjoy it as much as some others I watched like, “The Blue Umbrella” and “Knick Knack” but it was a sweet love story with good creativity.