Movie Review: Inside Out

Ever since I was little, people have done many tests and asked me lots of questions to try and get into my head and see what was going on in there. This is one of the reasons I wanted to go see Inside Out, because you get to see inside the main characters head.

Riley is born to a very loving Mother and Father and as she opens her eyes and begins to experience the world, we can see her inner emotions start to appear. The first one we meet is Joy (voiced by Amy Poelher) and then Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith). As time goes on we meet Fear (voiced by Bill Hader), Disgust (voiced by Mindy Kaling) and of course Anger (voiced by Lewis Black) who all look up to Joy as a leader, most of the time. This also leads to a little devaluing of the importance the other emotions play in Riley’s life as she has a very happy childhood that bring out her core personalities. 

This all gets shaken up when the family moves away from the only home she has ever known. As they struggle to figure out how to keep life the same as they always have in this new place, trouble happens. Sadness touches a memory and, somehow, turns it from a joyful one to one that is very sad. Joy panics at this and as one thing leads to another, Joy and Sadness are sucked away from the main control area with the core memories, changing Riley and who she is, possibly forever.

I really enjoyed the way Pixar portrayed our thoughts and emotions we feel every day. To be honest, I related mostly to Anger as that is the one that seems to be the hardest for me to keep in control when things go differently than what I feel it should. The lessons the different emotions learn as they fight to try and find a way to solve all the problems are ones everyone should learn, including how important every one (or in their case, every emotion) really is.

The one thing I think they didn’t quite get, was how many emotions the average human in this movie has. I know it was supposed to be a children’s movie so I understand the simplification, but would have enjoyed maybe a few more possibly at the end. I do think they had an evenly good way to resolve this a little at the end, so I don’t completely hold it against them.

I would probably rate this movie 8.5/10 for great voice acting and pretty good overall story plot, but for me it was a little bit too simple. 

As a fun Pixar tradition there is a cute animation short before the actual movie called Lava. It involves the Hawaiian Volcanic Islands with a love story set to song.