Spoilers in a Paragraph:<\/p>\n
Every human has five emotions in their mind reacting to circumstances and encouraging emotional responses from a command center in the mind:\u00a0 Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger.\u00a0 Riley moves to a new town where circumstances prevent Joy from being in control, Sadness takes over, then Sadness and Joy both disappear from Riley\u2019s emotional canon, as her key personality traits are stripped from her (\u201cHockey\u201d, \u201cFriends\u201d, \u201cFamily\u201d, \u201cGoofiness\u201d), until she is emotionless and without identity, at which point it\u2019s only Sadness that compels her to return to her family. The family listens to her concern (\u201cI miss home\u201d) and hugs her.\u00a0 Apparently, listening to Riley vent is her catharsis (her emotional burdens are released from within her and into the world where they don\u2019t (immediately) affect her). Then it\u2019s the warm embrace that creates happiness — Joy.<\/p>\n
So we spend at least the last 2\/3 of the movie in the spiraling hopelessness of Riley losing her emotions and personality.\u00a0 The \u201cmessage\u201d (if that\u2019s what it was) or resolution<\/em> comes in the last minute of the film.<\/p>\n The inciting incident is when Joy and Sadness lose control — they get sent away from the command center and have to find their way back, so for 2\/3 of the movie, Riley falls apart.\u00a0 She has no hope of happiness as long as Joy and her \u201ccore memories\u201d are not in the command center, and circumstances indicate that all the losses of memory and of personality during this bout of depression (or emotional chaos) are permanent which feels pretty shitty when you\u2019re watching it.\u00a0 I guess her personality comes back (after all, it\u2019s the core memories Joy carries around the whole movie), but you\u2019re not told it will.\u00a0 In fact, there\u2019s the constant fear that Sadness will accidentally ruin those too.<\/p>\n The comedy comes in the midst of angst.\u00a0 But overall, it wasn\u2019t a \u201cfun\u201d movie, but a dramatic movie.<\/p>\n That said, I don\u2019t think young kids even understand the story;\u00a0 kids in grade school probably get the emotions as emotions and as characters (like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse), but won\u2019t realize it\u2019s a psychoanalysis and won\u2019t draw any societal lesson from it; kids in middle school and high school will realize it\u2019s an analysis of the mind, BUT I don\u2019t think they\u2019re going to get anything out of it except to identify that if you lose your emotions, it\u2019s up to random luck whether those emotions in your head will find their way back to command center.\u00a0 For those who feel hopeless, they\u2019ll feel more hopeless. Or maybe the movie will express their emotions for them.\u00a0 Or maybe they\u2019ll learn to talk about their emotions before they disappear.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know their reaction.<\/p>\n But this movie will be talked about.\u00a0 With questions like \u201cWhat\u2019s the purpose of the movie?\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s the message of the movie?\u201d\u00a0 Two very important questions that must be answered but aren\u2019t.\u00a0 And it\u2019s one of the paradoxes of a story. Some stories are allegorical; they have a message and make it clear.\u00a0 Most stories, however, are entertainment \u2013 with no message.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d movies (still entertainment), which hold a mirror up to life (a mirror with an author\u2019s filter) and say \u201chere\u2019s the worst of it. No comment. Figure it out.\u201d\u00a0 I want to say, it\u2019s mostly \u201chere\u2019s the worst of it\u201d with a brief moment of allegorical.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My Experience:<\/p>\n Let me preface this review by saying I had been forewarned about this movie.\u00a0 I heard things like \u201cit was a good movie, but there was some LONG sad parts.\u201d\u00a0 I expected that of Pixar because ever since finding Nemo, Pixar has erred on the side of drama, sadness, and loss to drive their plot, and little on imagination and wonder, which is in my opinion why Toy Story and Monsters Inc. are their two best movies (after Geri\u2019s Game).\u00a0 The person who was complaining about the long sad parts said \u201cI\u2019m fine with sad parts in movies, but that was sad for way too long.\u201d<\/p>\n The first experience I had with the movie was the UK trailer, which was a 2 minute scene at the dinner table.\u00a0 It was cute and imaginative.\u00a0 It began with the mom asking the daughter \u201cHow was your day.\u201d\u00a0 When the daughter responds \u201cOkay I guess\u201d, the camera pushes into the mom\u2019s head and we see a council of little creatures at a console.\u00a0 They can see what mom sees.\u00a0 They\u2019re reacting to the scene dramatically.\u00a0 Intuitively, it\u2019s mom\u2019s emotions.\u00a0 They comment on the daughter\u2019s response, reading into her response, \u201csomething\u2019s up\u201d.\u00a0 Then they look to dad for help who, of course is thinking about sports (I\u2019m so tired of this stereotype), and missed the cue. The scene goes on until the girl storms off (I think).\u00a0 Typical teenage angst was my assumption.\u00a0 But what is it going to be about?\u00a0 Can they sustain a whole movie like Mystery Science Theater?\u00a0 No way.\u00a0 Then what?<\/p>\n Next I saw the US trailer #2, which was that 2 minute scene edited down, with titles and voice overs: \u201cthis is joy\u2026 this is anger\u2026 this is sadness\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n Okay, so going into the movie, I know it\u2019s about the emotions in your head.\u00a0 However, my brother had warned me:\u00a0 \u201cThe whole time, I couldn\u2019t figure out if the movie was going to be about the girl, or the emotions in her head.\u00a0 As it turned out, it really wasn\u2019t either.\u00a0 \u2026 As far as I could tell. \u201d\u00a0 He also told me \u201cIt will make you cry,\u201d\u00a0 as if it wasn\u2019t already obvious. It\u2019s a Pixar movie.<\/p>\n Now, the movie.<\/p>\n It began with the daughter\u2019s birth.\u00a0 POV of the baby opening it\u2019s eyes as it sees parents for the first time (probably not, actually, since both parents were standing up \u2013 so maybe they were grabbing their baby from the nursing center after birth).\u00a0 \u201cJoy\u201d is in the console watching the view.\u00a0 She explains what\u2019s going on.\u00a0 \u201cThis is Riley\u2026. I\u2019m joy\u2026. At first it was just me and Riley.\u00a0 We were so happy.\u201d\u00a0 I think the first memory was created.\u00a0 A snapshot, and a glass ball rolls out.\u00a0 The balls contains the snapshot replaying inside the glass (ala Minority Report).\u00a0 \u201cIt was me and Riley forever.\u201d\u00a0 Then Riley starts crying.\u00a0 Joy is confused and looks to the console \u2013 Sadness has pressed a button.\u00a0 \u201cWell, for eight seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then they go on collecting other emotions, and showing the creation of new memories.\u00a0 Joy explains \u201ccore memories\u201d which form Riley\u2019s personality and create the worlds of \u201cGoofiness\u201d \u201cFriendship\u201d \u201cFamily\u201d, \u201cHockey\u201d, etc. .\u00a0 Joy explains each emotion and why it exists:<\/p>\n I\u2019m \u201cJoy\u201d. I make Riley happy.<\/p>\n \u201cFear\u201d makes Riley careful, and keeps her from hurting herself (Fear makes Riley slow down to analyze a lamp chord and walk cautifously around it \u2013 she knocks it down anyway).<\/p>\n \u201cDisgust\u201d keeps Riley from poisoning herself.\u00a0 Disgust gives her a negative reaction to Broccoli.<\/p>\n \u201cAnger\u201d appeals to Riley\u2019s sense of fairness.\u00a0 When dad tells her she can\u2019t have something, Riley yells \u201cThat not fair!\u201d and storms off.<\/p>\n And this is \u201cSadness\u201d.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what she does.<\/p>\n Boom.\u00a0 That one hit hard.\u00a0 I interpreted this as \u201cSadness is a useless emotion\u201d.\u00a0 This could be a feel-good movie then, about conquering sadness.\u00a0 But I\u2019m told it\u2019s really sad and depressing\u2026 Hmm.. How?<\/p>\n Note that each emotion is color coded:<\/p>\n Disgust is green.<\/p>\n Anger is red.<\/p>\n Sadness is blue.<\/p>\n Fear is like a teal.<\/p>\n Joy is yellow.\u00a0\u00a0 Except Joy is only one with a dash of another color.\u00a0 She has blue hair.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why.\u00a0 My theory is that they wanted a color to balance the glowing yellow creature they had created and blue is the complimentary color.\u00a0 Then they thought, in order to justify themselves, well since the whole story is going to be sadness vs joy, maybe it\u2019s appropriate to add some Sadness to Joy.\u00a0 To say you can\u2019t have one without the other.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t think of any of this until after the movie \u2013 so ignore it for now.\u00a0 And you didn\u2019t hear that about the plot.<\/p>\n So after the growing up montage and teaching you the world mechanics, Riley finds herself in an over-packed car, moving to San Francisco.<\/p>\n And the hard knocks begin. And they don\u2019t let up\u2026. until the very \u2026 last \u2026 moment \u2026 of the movie.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t know this yet, and it isn\u2019t the inciting incident.<\/p>\n In the car, Riley Fears the move. The car ride is too long; she gets angry.<\/p>\n Upon arrival, she sees the new house.\u00a0 It\u2019s a tiny two-story town home crammed between other town homes.\u00a0 (Disgust).<\/p>\n Riley sees her new bedroom \u2013 the attic room.\u00a0 There\u2019s dust and garbage everywhere.\u00a0 And a dead rat.\u00a0 Disgusting.\u00a0 Joy always tries to recover the moment by thinking positively.\u00a0 Hey, clean slate; you can decorate!\u00a0 Riley imagines her room decorated.\u00a0 She\u2019s happy again.\u00a0 She runs downstairs to the moving van, BUT\u2026. \u201cUh oh, the parents look stressed.\u201d\u00a0 Dad: \u201cThe moving van isn\u2019t going to arrive until Thursday\u201d (a few days out).\u00a0 \u201cGreat,\u201d she thinks \u201cnow I have to go to school with old clothes.\u00a0 I won\u2019t have anywhere to sleep\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 But Joy is persistent.\u00a0 What if?\u00a0 Yeah\u2026. Joy puts a lightbulb into the console.\u00a0 Riley crabs a hockey stick and a crumpled piece of paper and plays hockey around the new living room, scoring a goal around her dad into the fireplace.\u00a0 They go for another round, and mom joins in.\u00a0 A new memory is formed \u2013 a happy one.\u00a0 Only, as it\u2019s rolling down, dad gets a call, cutting her play short.\u00a0 Dad has to go to the office immediately. \u00a0Dad takes off, and Riley thinks about the pizza place she passed on her way there.\u00a0 Riley and mom head to pizza, but she gets BROCCOLI on her pizza.\u00a0 Yuck!! (It was funny, but kind of messed up at the same time).<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably a good point to ask yourself what\u2019s going on here?\u00a0 It appears that every character is autonomous, yet connected.\u00a0 Riley performs her own actions and makes decisions without her emotions. \u00a0HOWEVER, her emotions control her reactions to moments.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s the memories.\u00a0 They generate spontaneously.\u00a0 Most of them are happy.\u00a0 They\u2019re color coded too.\u00a0 Most of them are yellow, with spots of the other colors.\u00a0 What makes it hard to talk about, though, is that Joy and Riley are both autonomous characters, so I find it a challenge to use pronouns like \u201cshe\u201d and \u201cher\u201d without explicitly naming the character.<\/p>\n So then Riley goes to school. Where she is asked to introduce herself.\u00a0 She says she\u2019s from Minnesota.\u00a0 The teacher says, \u201coh then you must like the weather here.\u201d\u00a0 Riley laughs and goes on to explain how she loves the winters.\u00a0 We (including the emotions) see her memories.\u00a0 In the winter, the lake freezes over and she ice skates and plays hockey, and every year her hockey team makes it to the finals \u2013 MADE it to the finals.\u00a0 She stops and realizes none of it is going to happen anymore.<\/p>\n The emotions are concerned.\u00a0 Why did she stop?\u00a0 Then the screen turns blue.\u00a0 What\u2019s going on! They turn around, and spot Sadness touching the memory.\u00a0 It turns from yellow to blue.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat have you done?!\u201d Joy exclaims.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s a core memory!\u201d She tries to rub the memory herself to change it back.\u00a0 To no avail.<\/p>\n Sadness apologizes, and leans on another core memory.\u00a0 It begins to turn blue.\u00a0 \u201cStop it!\u00a0 Back away!\u201d<\/p>\n Riley starts crying in class.<\/p>\n Later that day (or week), she tries out for the hockey team, but messes up because she\u2019s still not very happy.\u00a0 That makes her angry, and she storms off.\u00a0 The \u201cHockey\u201d world (a floating island off in the distance, connected by a thin bridge, over an abyss (explained as the dump where memories never return)) begins to turn gray and stops moving.\u00a0 Hockey \u2013 one of her key personality traits — is dead to her now.<\/p>\n After that, she video-chats with a friend from home\u2013who has found a new friend.\u00a0 In anger, she shuts her out.\u00a0 Her \u201cFriend\u201d world turns gray.\u00a0 This is bad.\u00a0 This is all happening so quickly!\u00a0 Her \u201cFriend\u201d core memories are turning blue because Sadness is touching them.\u00a0 They\u2019re getting sucked into long term memory through a vacuum chute, and Joy tries to stop it.\u00a0 But then Sadness and Joy gets sucked in, and go into an area on the other side of the abyss, beyond the worlds, into the a massive library of memories.\u00a0 When they land they look back at the console, across the abyss.<\/p>\n Sadness explains the situation:\u00a0 \u201cThis is bad.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry Joy.\u00a0 Without you at the console, Riley can\u2019t be happy.\u00a0 We have to get you back.\u201d<\/p>\n When you look at the distance they have to travel and the challenges they faced, the trek to Mordor came to mind.<\/p>\n This was the inciting incident.<\/p>\n Joy spends the rest of the movie traveling through long term memory, imagination land, dream productions, the train of thought, and the abyss\u2026. While Riley\u2019s remaining world\u2019s fade to gray, crumble and fall into the abyss, and the console fails to function for the remaining emotions.<\/p>\n This sounds like clinical depression.\u00a0 Except without sadness.\u00a0 It\u2019s beyond sadness.\u00a0 She can\u2019t feel anything anymore. She\u2019s numb.\u00a0 But she can still reason, and she reasons that all her good memories were in Minnesota, so she\u2019s going back.<\/p>\n So at the end of the movie, Riley is finally on a bus, running away \u2013 back to Minnesota.\u00a0 She has no emotions, and Joy has finally made it back to the console with Sadness.<\/p>\n For some reason, Joy realizes that Joy isn\u2019t the correct emotion for this moment.\u00a0 It\u2019s Sadness.\u00a0 She tells Sadness to take control right now.\u00a0 So Sadness presses the button and it works for her.<\/p>\n Riley suddenly feels sad and bails on the bus.\u00a0 She gets off and goes home.<\/p>\n At home, her mom and dad are concerned for her.\u00a0 She apologizes that she can\u2019t maintain a positive attitude (because her mom thanked her for handling the move so well on the first day of the move).\u00a0 They say, \u201cit\u2019s okay, we know the move was tough.\u201d\u00a0 Then Sadness presses the button again, and Riley starts crying.\u00a0 \u201cI just want to go back to Minnesota.\u201d\u00a0 Her parents hug her and tell her it\u2019s going to be okay.\u00a0 In this embrace, the camera pushes into her face, and she breaks a small smile.<\/p>\n THE END.<\/p>\n You see, only a few scenes before, Joy needed to motivate a fading childhood memory \u2013 a character who was their guide through the latter part of the journey.\u00a0 Joy couldn\u2019t convince him to get moving because all was lost, but Sadness just listened to him, complain about his loss, and he almost immediately felt better.\u00a0 Joy was surprised and asked Sadness \u201chow\u2019d you do that?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I guess I just listened to him.\u201d<\/p>\n So long story short,<\/p>\n Riley moves to a new town where circumstances prevent Joy from being in control, Sadness takes over, then Sadness and Joy both disappear from Riley\u2019s emotional canon, as her key personality traits are stripped from her (\u201cHockey\u201d, \u201cFriends\u201d, \u201cFamily\u201d, \u201cGoofiness\u201d), until she is emotionless and without identity, at which point it\u2019s only Sadness that compels her to return to her family. The family listens to her concern (\u201cI miss home\u201d) and hugs her.\u00a0 Listening to Riley vent is her catharsis (her emotional burdens are released from within her and into the world where they don\u2019t (immediately) affect her). Then it\u2019s the warm embrace that creates happiness.<\/p>\n Then the movie is over.<\/p>\n How fun.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong:\u00a0 there was some very imaginative things, and lots of funny moments, but overall, the outlook of the film was very dismal.\u00a0 Unnerving even.<\/p>\n Starting about 20-30 minutes into the movie, the movie made it clearer and clearer that there was NO HOPE.\u00a0 Even Joy appeared to be a skeleton of her former self for most of the movie (for the entire journey from long term memory).\u00a0 Memories were lost and her core personality traits disappeared.\u00a0 \u201cForever!\u201d\u00a0 And even though I think the worlds returned at the end of the movie (for a minute, to resolve the movie), there was no indication that they would.<\/p>\n So it sounds like a visualization of a depressed mind, void of hope, telling people that they should be sad, and talk to their family about what\u2019s making them sad.<\/p>\n IT OFFERS NO SOLUTIONS.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure the author believes \u201cThe solution is talking about it.\u201d\u00a0 I think that\u2019s half-assed.\u00a0 I can write a real good god-damned imaginative visualization of depression, and I could probably win an Oscar for it, BUT without offering a method for helping the depression, and displaying the solutions in action, repeating the techniques so one can learn to modify cognitive behaviors, it would just be another useless Oscar winning movie.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019d argue, if it did offer success techniques \u2013 it would NOT win an Oscar.\u00a0 Inside Out will.\u00a0 But I guess it\u2019s not hard.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably the only animated, kid movie that appears<\/em> to have a message.<\/p>\n If I write a movie about people with good attitudes coming together to solve a problem, but butting heads about the solution,\u00a0 and joyfully overcoming many obstacles along the way, Hollywood quickly dismisses it (*cough* Armageddon;\u00a0 *cough* Independence Day; *cough* Speed).\u00a0 Audiences love it, but acknowledge it as a \u201cgood\u201d movie.\u00a0 But if I make a movie about one conflict that can\u2019t be resolved except for the very end, with lots of moments to dwell on disappointment, people think it\u2019s a \u201cgood\u201d movie.\u00a0 Fuuuuck thaaaaat!<\/em><\/p>\n If I didn\u2019t prep my brain for it \u2013 if I had come into the movie without a sense of what it would be \u2013 it certainly would have broken my emotional barrier and I would have been crying.\u00a0 For no reason.\u00a0 Tears that would bring literally NO GOOD to me.\u00a0 Here\u2019s where I\u2019ll have you know: when I cry, my immune system drops, and for days<\/u>, my eyes remain puffy, my body and muscles remain fatigued, and I\u2019m depressed and in pain.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter what makes me cry.<\/p>\n I DO NOT NEED THAT.\u00a0 EVER.\u00a0 PERIOD.<\/p>\n What I NEED is a feel-good movie about people with good attitudes, making good decisions, taking action joyfully, and in the long run getting rewarded for it all.<\/p>\n