Movie: Inside Out
Release Date: July 15, 2015
Language: English
Directors: Pete Doctor, Ronaldo Del Carmen
Stars: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Richard Kind and more
Have you ever wondered what makes a person do certain things? Why they say things, what the reason is behind their actions? Wonder no more, Inside Out is here!
“After young Riley is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco, her emotions – Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness – conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school.” (IMDb)
This summary doesn’t quite explain why you shouldn’t wonder about the underlying cause of people’s actions anymore… Let me do that for you!
In this Disney Pixar animated movie, we are introduced to Riley, a young girl who loves her family, hockey, her best friend and is basically just enjoying life as it is. Inside her head are the emotions, introduced as little characters who keep Riley running, make her feel things, get her to do certain things.
It’s not an understatement to say that Joy (Amy Poehler), the first emotion Riley has, is the most important one. Joy seems to be in control of all the other emotions in her head and knows how to make things well. So basically, when Joy goes missing, the other emotions have no idea how to handle Riley’s everyday life. Maybe if her everyday life hadn’t changed so much, they would have been better off. Unfortunately, Riley and her family move from Minnesota to San Francisco, where she has no friends and where she doesn’t like her new home. Her emotions are all confused about what to do. This gets worse when Joy and Sadness both go missing and the panel that controls Riley is left with Disgust, Anger and Fear.
The characters are funny in their own way. The emotions have their own way of doing things, looking at what’s going on and handling all that is happening in Riley’s life. The emotions leave a legit impression on how they’d undergo actions. It’s really funny to watch! After a while, I got a little bit annoyed with Sadness, though. Joy had the same effect, only a bit later on in the movie. Sadness always down talks everything (duh, it’s Sadness) after which Joy tries to cheer her up again. It’s kind of a hopeless deal.
When Sadness and Joy go missing, the other emotions try to do their best by ‘thinking like Joy’ but don’t quite seem to manage it very well. There is one scene in which Riley and her parents are having dinner and she seems indifferent to anything that happens around her, because there is no Joy nor Sadness. The emotions in her parents’ heads get a little confused as to why Riley is lacking emotions. This scene really showed that Disney knows how to keep up the pace in the movie by skipping from Riley’s head to her Mom’s head to her Dad’s head to the overall scene at the dinner table without being unclear. Head’s up to Pixar for this one!
Another thing I’d have to applaud for is the animation. I’m usually more into DreamWorks Animated movies but I have to say that I thought the animation for this movie was stunning, with the different perspectives, the glows around the emotions (especially Joy!) and the movements of the characters.
As we see Joy and Sadness trying to find their way back into Headquarters, where the emotions control Riley, we see the two opposites working together and finding out how to fix whatever the other emotions had Riley do. The ending was lovely and unexpected (how they manage the new memories coming in) and I loved seeing Riley develop as she adjusts to her new surroundings with the help of her emotions.
In a nutshell:
Liked it: Yes 🙂
Loved it: Yes
Re-watch: Why not?!
Cinema worthy: Yes!
