In Review: "Inside Out"

When was the last time you said, "Let's watch it again!" after sitting through a 2-hour movie? Maybe when you were 5? Mine was after seeing this movie once last Friday and the second time on Saturday. In my opinion, this is the best Disney/Pixar movie since "Finding Nemo". It blows "Up" out of the water.

The Story

Riley and her family are moving to a new home with a new school and a new group of friends. That's the basic plot line, but what makes it more exciting and more innovative is taking a look at what is going on inside of Riley's head during this life-changing event.

Riley has 5 core emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). These emotions run how Riley reacts and interacts with the world around her through a control panel in her head called "Headquarters". But what happens if Joy and Sadness accidentally leave "Headquarters" and Disgust, Anger and Fear have to run the show? How will Joy and Sadness find their way back? And what is lurking inside of Riley's brain?

The Stars

All of the voices were perfect fits for their characters. Some were obvious choices like Lewis Black for Anger (he always seems to be yelling) and Mindy Kaling for Disgust (she has the best mean-girl voice). Others were surprises like Bill Hader as the concerned Fear and Amy Poehler as Joy, who usually plays characters with dry humor and not usually bright caricatures.

The Message

This movie addresses so much: how taboo sadness is in society (especially for women), how controlling depression can be, and how much family and love means to the human soul.

The lesson I liked the most from this movie is how important it is to feel -- feel all emotions. Not just kids or women or men or whites or blacks but all people! Even animals! (Stay til the credits to see more instances of what happens inside of people's heads.)

It is so wrong of us to shirk an emotion of the right to be felt, even the ones society deems as "bad" or "wrong". When we are angry, we have the right to be angry and show that anger. If we don't, it can hurt us and our connections with the people and the world around us. Imagine a world without fear or without sadness. People would be jumping off buildings and living without sympathy or compassion. Fear protects us from doing things that will hurt us emotionally and physically. It knows that sticking our hand in an electric socket is a bad idea and so is distancing ourselves from the people who love us. Sadness lets us feel what other people are feeling and live outside of what we want and what we feel.

All of these emotions shape who we are and how we react to the world around us. And no one doesn't have one of these emotions. No one is without fear or sadness. Everyone gets down sometimes and no one is down forever. The human mind is so complicated, and every mind is so different from the next. For example, during the movie, when Riley was angry there were times when I felt sad. But that doesn't make it wrong, it just makes us different.

Overall

The coolest part about this movie is how original, inventive and well-researched it is. Some of my favorite parts include when Joy and Sadness visit Imagination Land where all of her daydreams and imaginings live (like a cookie house, Cloud Land and the French Fries Forest), travel through the Abstract Thought Machine which allows Riley to break down and understand concepts and travel on the Train of Thought that contains all of the information, imaginings and ideas she comes up with during the day. Pixar has also come up with this idea that each memory, big and small, becomes a tiny sphere that is assigned to an emotion based on how that memory makes us feel. Some of these memories powers our Personality Islands that make up who we are. The pieces of the puzzle are so well researched and thought out, you know they talked to some psychologists before beginning animation.

This is what Pixar looks like when it's on its game. This is the inventive, creative stuff that we all feel in love with when we saw "Toy Story". This movie will most likely not make much money (because there's not much merchandise to sell) nor will all the kids be talking about it (it's much more adult than a movie about fish). But I know this is one I would want my children to see, and their children to see, and their children. It's one of the very best.

4 out of 4 Memories