Inside Out

Movie, 2015, PG

Premise - Pixar's Inside Out takes us inside the control panel of the brain of a young girl named Riley, with characters such as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear. When Riley's life is uprooted as she moves to San Francisco, her emotions become unbalanced, causing chaos within Riley's brain's headquarters. Joy and Sadness come together to reconstruct her new framework of her own personality.


Review - Pixar always likes to project emotions onto inanimate, or at the very least non-human, beings. Then they went one step further down meta with this film in the best way possible. I loved all the memes about how Pixar comes up with their film ideas. Cars - What if cars had feelings? Toy Story - What if toys had feelings? Finding Nemo - What if fish had feelings? Inside Out - WHAT IF FEELINGS HAD FEELINGS?!

This is one of those movies that is so rich with content that even after a good night's sleep, it is difficult to form a complex enough thesis about. I love studying psychology, and I absolutely loved this artistic model of how the brain might operate as a society. The film makes a very bold claim that emotions are the "headquarters" of the mind, more so than cognition, perception, language, or even memory. While short-term memory lives up in headquarters with the emotions as they become color-coded, long-term memory (outside of core memories) exist on the outskirts of Riley's mind. Nevertheless, the importance of memory once again is linked with emotion in this film, as each memory is only understood through the emotion that was experienced as the memory was coded. I find this to be a vital lesson. In addition, the idea of a malleable framework for personality is important. The different personality islands of Riley's values are huge and solid, yet are still subject to crumbling apart in major events of change, trauma, or even mold slowly as she ages. As her life progresses, she develops more islands.

But apart from exciting my cognitive psychology mind with all its little easter eggs, what easily digestible lesson does this incredibly complex film teach children, or even parents for that matter? In essence, this film is about the value of adverse experiences. Sadness is just as vital to Riley's personality as is Joy, and Joy only causes more distress by trying to block out Sadness during Riley's more uprooting moments. Sadness is the central character to this film, as we are shown how important it is to let our children, and ourselves, just feel what we need to feel. (88/100)

Quote - "We could cry until we can't breathe?!" - Or literally anything by sadness

What to watch for - The montage at the very end where they zoom inside a bunch of different random characters' brains. Massive shoutout to the cat.

If you liked this movie, I'd recommend Finding Nemo!

Directed by Pete Docter
Distributed by Pixar