Inside Out Review

I’m a little late to the party on this one. I was not able to see Inside Out when it first came out in theaters. Watching it today was my first time watching it. Just a warning, I will mention a few spoilers.

In typical Pixar fashion, I knew this movie was going to turn on the waterworks. They did not disappoint with this one. I knew I was going to enjoy this movie just by the characters. An emotional movie about emotions? Now, that has to be good. I thought the emotions themselves were great characters. I had some first impressions of the emotions set in very soon. Joy kind of got on my nerves due to her mentality of being the leader of the group who has all the answers. Sadness just seemed like a total screw up to me at first because she kept turning core memories from happy to sad. Disgust is just great and is very relatable. Anger and his witty humor and short fuse is very entertaining. Fear is very fun as well.

As for Riley and her family, I thought they were great too. I loved seeing Riley’s progression and the inner workings of her mind and personality. The one thing this movie gets a whole lot of credit for is how creative and clever it is. It is so colorful and imaginative. I loved the touch that was added about how several memories can be created in a given moment while experiencing different emotions. I felt bad for Riley the entire movie. I’ve never had to move to a different state or even considered running away from home due to being unhappy, but I certainly felt all of the emotions that Riley was feeling. You could say this movie is a trip down memory lane.

My favorite character was definitely Bing Bong. He is just so lovable! I think I had the strongest connection to him because I had an imaginary friend myself when I was younger. I loved all of his mannerisms and wacky personality. I believe he even had the boot from Wall-E in his little pouch. At times, I felt he paralleled Lotso from Toy Story 3. His departure from the movie was when I absolutely lost it. Seeing him sacrifice himself so Joy could get back to Headquarters to save Riley left me completely heartbroken. I was thoroughly hoping that he would come back towards the end of the film, but to no avail. Even after the movie had ended, I still felt the urge to shed a tear.

One thing that bothered me throughout the movie was that Joy had blue hair. All of the other emotions have a signature color, but Joy broke this pattern. I wondered, she’s yellow, so how come she isn’t blonde or something? After the movie ended and I’d walked away for a while, it dawned on me. Blue is Sadness’ signature color, so why would Joy be sporting a blue ‘do? I concluded that it was because Riley needed to feel sadness in order to feel joy. I never would’ve thought colors would be such a large metaphor. Well done, Pixar, well done.