Inside Out makes the profound case that sadness is good
Image: Screenshot: Inside Out Film Features The Pixar Moment
Pixar makes its movies for children. Not exclusively for children, of course—Hollywood figured out long ago that it’s more profitable to entertain everyone, rather than have parents fight off intense boredom every time they lug their pre-adolescent kids to the multiplex. (Especially since little kids love watching the same movie over and over and over again, until the words “Hakuna Matata” inspire homicidal thoughts.) Pixar’s films, in particular, tend to be remarkably sophisticated, tackling ideas and emotions that only an adult could possibly process or appreciate. Nonetheless, “must not scar or alienate pipsqueaks” is a constraint influencing every choice the company makes, which is why an uplifting message (often asserting the value of being a little bit different) virtually always gets imparted in the closing minutes. Even when a Pixar movie makes you cry—and they’re by no means bashful about jerking viewers’ tear ducts—the sadness generally arrives at the beginning, or somewhere in the middle. It’s not the point.
Except that it is the point of Inside Out, a tale about anthropomorphized emotions in which Sadness (voiced by The Office’s Phyllis Smith) is not just a character but ultimately revealed to be the film’s most important character. To call it a twist ending might be pushing things a little far, but there’s an unexpected force to Inside Out’s climactic sequence, in which the manic Joy (Amy Poehler) has to accept that human beings aren’t necessarily optimized by her own omnipresence—that being sad has a purpose, as opposed to merely getting in happiness’ way. That’s a truly revolutionary notion for a movie aimed at (or at least determined not to scare off) small children. What’s more, it’s not even a tiny bit subtextual. The Toy Story franchise can be a superficially fun ride even if the stuff about obsolescence flies over your head, but needing to embrace sadness (Sadness) is Inside Out’s surface-level narrative, ensuring that it can’t be missed, ignored, or rationalized away. The movie literally does not make sense unless you reckon with it.
That said, there is a visual metaphor at work. After Joy finally realizes that Sadness has a function and isn’t just a whiny annoyance, she brings her back to the mental control room of their person, an 11-year-old girl named Riley who’s currently in the process of running away from home. Riley’s memories, we’ve learned by this point, are stored as small orbs, each one sporting the color of its dominant emotion: yellow for happy memories, blue for sad ones, red for angry ones, etc. No orb has more than one color. It’s the creation of Riley’s first mixed emotion that pulls her out of her downward spiral. Joy, who’s spent the entire movie zealously guarding the yellow orbs from Sadness’ ostensibly infectious touch, hands her colleague several of Riley’s happiest memories and watches them turn blue, now tinged with an awareness that the time they represent is gone and won’t be coming back. Then Sadness feeds them back into the machine, where they re-emerge as memories that are now designated as happy and sad. (Significantly, they retain swirls of both yellow and blue, separately, rather than simply merging into a uniform green. Though that’s at least partially because green already serves as Disgust’s color.)
Let’s state that again, more plainly: Inside Out’s happy ending—and it is very much a happy ending—involves making a little girl cry by adding a sense of regret to the happiest moments of her young life. Try to imagine the meeting in which that idea got pitched to a bunch of suits responsible for ensuring that Pixar’s stockholders won’t see their memories of buying shares turn from yellow to blue. Director Pete Docter and his co-screenwriters, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, reportedly consulted various experts in an effort to ensure that their concept was psychologically sound, but that didn’t make it any less risky as the basis for a $175 million animated feature that absolutely must have widespread kiddy appeal. Pixar trusts its creative team, though, even when they insist that they can fashion a crowdpleaser from the inception of bittersweetness. Mission resoundingly accomplished, and anyone who can watch Sadness reconfigure Riley’s entire early childhood without tearing up themselves should feel… which color is mortification?
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Until Inside Out, I’d flip flop between what my favorite Pixar film was. But once this came out, it became unequivocally my favorite. I remember watching it in the theater and laughing hysterically at the abstract thought scene and then being caught off guard that I cried so much at the Bing Bong scene and the end when Joy realizes she needs Sadness. A perfect 10 film for me. Michael Giacchino’s score also helped make it really memorable.
I’d had my first child two months earlier so I was already hooked when the opening moments put a lump in my throat (sidenote: thanks to parent and baby cinema, this was his first Pixar film – he’s now watched 13 of them on the big screen). And while it wasn’t the last time the film did that it can’t be overstated how funny the film is – with abstract thought being the highlight. Well, maybe the jingle. Or just Anger outright. Or the mother/father emotions-off…
Your son started off his Pixar future with a good one. There were a lot of fun details in the film too, like the movie posters when they go to dream productions (“Help I’m falling for a very long time”).
I always wonder if this would have still been my favorite Pixar film if I hadn’t already been an emotionally mature adult when I saw it; I’d like to think that whether I saw this in my 30s, 20s, or teens, Inside out would have resonated with me the same.
I saw it in my early 20s – it’s definitely in my top tier of Pixar films.
It was interesting to me that every single one of the mother’s emotions resembled Sadness and all of the Dad’s emotions looked like Anger (but with a mustache). I’m guessing Riley’s parents have some issues of their own to work on.
Oh, wait a minute — it was the bus driver who’s emotions all looked like anger. Riley’s dad’s brain was just being driven by Anger during the dinner scene, and Riley’s mom had sadness at the controls. Ignore me.
Bing Bong is the worst thing Pixar has ever done. Emotionally manipulative dreck.
I think my one complaint about the movie is I didn’t get the point of “Disgust”. Of course Mindy Kaling did great with the role – but it’s the only emotion that didn’t seem like it had a role in the story (besides the rightful rejection of California-style pizza) and it feels too niche/specific to belong in a fundamental “Big Five”pantheon of primary emotions. I also thought it was a bit odd to have 4 out 5 main emotions be negative (or at least unpleasant) emotions – Fear, Anger, Sadness, Disgust. Narratively, it allowed Joy/Poehler to have this fun “upbeat kindergarten teacher barely controlling an unruly classroom” vibe. But surely we have more than just 1 fundamentally positive emotion – something like Trust or Love or Hope, etc.
If I recall correctly, the original planning had 30 to 40 emotions classified in more specifics like Trust, and they basically whittled it down to the most useful ones they could use narratively.
That makes sense. I’d had the same thought as robertmoses in the past and wondered if Disgust was the best choice for portraying one of the core emotions. Trust and Hope would have been nice ones to have from an emotion standpoint but hard to flesh out as a character in a film compared to Disgust.
I think the idea is that all of those mature emotions (Trust/Love/Hope) are combinations of the 5 base emotions.
I don’t think Disgust ever gets portrayed this way in the movie, but disgust is a pretty powerful moral emotion, and shared disgust can be a real bonding experience. For example, you might be disgusted by someone else’s selfishness; or disgusted at your own behavior when you lie to a friend. There’s an element of moral judgment that isn’t necessarily captured by anger, fear, or sadness.
Edit: Just watched a clip of Disgust scenes. It’s worth pointing out that Disgust is also in charge of taste, and identifying (and avoiding) faux pas. Not everyone flies their freak flag at all times and to all people, and Disgust is in charge of understanding what disgusts others and avoiding those things.
See also Cringe.
Disgust is also a good survival feature. A lot of stuff that is poisonous to us tastes awful, and recognising that is a good way to not die.
Disgust is gonna be a fucking rockstar when the period hits
I believe they chose those emotions because, according to our current understanding of psychology, they are the 5 primal, universal emotions, and they are largely negative precisely because they are so key to human development (disgust developed from detecting poisonous food sources, fear from staying away from hazards, anger from territoriality, sadness from the need to signal other humans for help, joy as the positive reinforcement when you do something that ensures your survival).
I think disgust was probably just poorly named. There’s value to the emotional responses associated with a sense of right and wrong, for instance, and they’re not always a good match for anger or fear.
or Curiosity
I believe the five emotions were chosen because they are primal. In that regard, Disgust is protective, keeping us from doing stupid things like eating things that would make us sick, etc.On the other hand, Trust, Love, and Hope come from experience.
There are positive and negative sides to all emotions. The darker side of Joy is Mania. The brighter sides of Anger is Justice, Disgust is Reason, and Fear is Courage. Only Sadness is actually explored in the movie.
The psych model they based the movie off of actually had one more emotion: Suprise, which they nixed, because it’s so fleeting. Supposedly, every other emotion is a mixture of those primary 6.
I’ve seen this movie 3 or 4 times now and still cry at the Bing Bong scene.
Now it’s time to voice my deepest Pixar confession: I didn’t have a strong emotional reaction to the Bing Bong scene.
*gets pitchfork out of shed*
gives shed 6.7/10
You monster! /s
Neither did I, really. I never had invisible or imaginary friends as a child, so that might’ve been why. Also, I don’t have children, so I’m sure that adds to it.Sweet scene overall, though. Richard Kind is the best.
>I never had invisible or imaginary friends as a child, so that might’ve been why.Maybe you did and you forgot them.
Nah. I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.
You sir, might be a soulless human,My 45 year old self lost it when Bing Bong sacrificed himself, my daughter still makes fun of me for crying so much in the theater. He didn’t just sacrifice himself, he sacrificed Riley remembering him and that stung.
I mean, yeah, that’s what’s so wrecking about that sequence. It’s not about imaginary friends, it’s about such a selfless act that won’t even be remembered. Such an act of pure love.And what he also really represents is all those years of what your child was like that are gone forever as they age. You love your children always, but it’s mindblowing and sad how much they change, and how you miss what they used to be like, especially in those baby and toddler years. They don’t even remember or can’t relate to what it is that you miss- it’s so gone from their memory that it might as well not have happened.
“it’s about such a selfless act that won’t even be remembered”This right here. I’ve never had an imaginary friend, but his sacrifice hits so hard both because almost no one will know, but also because, up until that point, Bing Bong’s character has been defined by the loss of his relationship to Riley.In any other movie, something would happen to make Riley remember him, even if only for a moment. Instead, he re-purposes his needs into an sacrificial act.
Please note that at least Mike D’Angelo did not spoil Bing Bong’s character arc for anyone.
He didn’t just sacrifice himself, he sacrificed Riley remembering him and that stung.Yep… that’s the kicker. He did what he did, and she will never even remember him for it. Crushing scene.
idk if i’m ready to be a parent just yet cause my first thought on reading this was “i’m gonna wait till YOU cry watching something and then i’m gonna laugh in your frickin’ face”
I had yours for you, and for anyone else who did not have one. It’s OK. I can take it. And for me, it’s not about forgetting a specific imaginary friend, it was about putting away childish things. Knowing that the way in which you experienced things as a child is, at some point, forever gone. You CAN’T have an imaginary friend (or its equivalent) any more. You turn around and it’s gone, and then it’s gone for your own children. You didn’t even notice it go. Oh goodness, I’m crying now.
And now I’m crying. Thanks a lot. (But seriously, Bing Bong wrecked me at the theatre. I couldn’t catch my breath. Watching your own children grow up so fast and lose that childhood innocence is heartbreaking, and they completely captured that feeling with this scene.)
My oldest is going to college this fall (maybe), half the country away. I have two months. I don’t know what to do. I know it’s my job to do the best I can to prepare him to live his own life, and I literally could not be more proud of how he’s turned out. But I’m going to be gutted.
Mine just left for a residential job at her college. With nothing else to do this summer, it seemed like the best option. And just like that, she was gone three months before I was expecting her to go. Thats the thing about parenting, success is heartbreak. There is no way around it. Happy, sad, scared, angry (at time moving so quickly), it’s everything.
Not that you need to feel anymore gutted or misty that your oldest is going away for college, but have you seen Enough Said? There’s a scene in the film where JLD’s character’s daughter is all packed up and leaving for college and they sit in her empty room together that wrecks me. It really hits home that her childhood is officially over and things will never be the same again.
Thanks for alerting me to a movie that I will absolutely NOT be watching.
Ha, glad I could help in this unexpected way. In the future if you’re ever feeling up for it, it’s a really nice movie. It’s sweet, has moments of humor, and is superbly acted, including the three young women who play the teens.
Yeah, I’m not sad for me. I don’t remember what I don’t remember. But my kids have grown to the point where there are things they once loved that they either don’t remember or have no emotional attachment to anymore. Both are absolutely heartbreaking for a parent. I feel like this movie is very part and parcel with the Toy Story films, taking the themes of those movies every further.
speak for yourself. i made all mine grow up with me and get jobs. we drifted apart since, buncha assholes…
It’s fine. I, myself, had a much stronger reaction to “I just wanted Riley to be happy.”. I mean, it’s Joy and she’s crying. It really got to me.
Wow, I hadn’t made that connection: as Riley is growing up and learning to mix her emotions, the avatars of her Emotions are learning to mix Themselves.Now I’m misting up…
Me neither, I could tell the whole arc of the character the moment he first appeared, so it just felt kind of manipulative. My other confession is that, like Up, I think the movie overall was just okay. So I guess I’m that mortified color.
For me, it was definitely one of those “look away from the screen because I don’t want to openly sob in this theater right now” moments. My deep Pixar confession would probably be that I thought the last two Toy Storys ate shit.
Same. Honestly, Inside Out as a whole just leaves me cold. I think that Pixar is a great studio that makes wonderful and complex popular entertainment like few others. But I’m just baffled by the critical response to Inside Out.I think my major hurdle here is that I just can’t relate to the main character’s dilemma. Sure, navigating teenage emotions are universal, but being upset because you have to move across the country so that you and your family can make boatloads of money just isn’t relatable to me. I mean, this family is going from the midwest to San Francisco. You’re not making that move unless your new job is shoveling money into your wallet. And do you know how much it costs to live in the heart of San Francisco in 2015 like this family does? Their rent (or mortage if they bought) is going to eclipse most people’s yearly salary. For most of the film I couldn’t help but think about the fact that even if this teenager has some sort of emotional problems with her move, her parents likely get such great health insurance that they can afford a top-notch therapist, which is something that can’t be said for many Americans. The film is supposed to be about something nearly universal, but the particulars actually make it a story about extreme privilege, and the people at Pixar were completely blind to this aspect of their story.
Serious question, do you have kids? I think there is a significant difference in the reactions that people with kids vs. people without kids have to the movie.
I didn’t when I saw the movie, but I now have a two year old, so that might change things. I’ve been thinking about revisiting Inside Out five years later to see if it works on me now.
You might even want to give it another couple of years before revisiting it. Once your kid is talking, and dealing with regular kid trials and tribulations, I think your brain gets a slight but significant re-wiring.
This is something I wonder with certain movies—whether being a parent makes someone more likely to feel an emotional attachment to a movie when there is a core parent-child relationship involved. I’m not yet a parent but Inside Out, Arrival, and Interstellar all made me a weepy mess.
Arrival and Interstellar are a bit different, since they’re actually movies about parents, with the parents as main characters, so being part of that group will change things for you fundamentally. With this movie, I don’t think you need to be a parent to experience it, but being a parent makes things hit home in a very different way. When you’re an adolescent, you typically want to be an adult, and are kind of eager to kill off your childish self in order to move on to the next thing. Nature supplies you with a ton of hormones and society supplies you with peer pressure to grease the skids of that transition. So when Inside Out or the Toy Story movies invoke the loss of a character’s child self, as an adult you’re going to experience nostalgia for the child you used to be. There are a lot of powerful feelings to be had there, and those movies make you feel them. But when you’re a parent, you get to experience movies like this in a different way. Because in addition to feeling nostalgia for your own child self, you know that your kids are going to go through that process. You know it’s a necessity of life, but you also know that when they kill off their childish selves, you as a parent are going to lose something precious—someone, really—and that loss is going to be permanent. And that hits you a lot harder than the loss of your own childhood.
That was really insightful and sheds light on how being a parent makes it doubly sad when that feeling of loss of childhood sets in. Now I’d like to hear your insight into why Arrival and Interstellar are different from a parent vs non-parent POV.
Thanks! Spoiler warning for both films, obviously:Giving it a second thought, although the two movies have the same specter of parental failure hanging over them, they’re not really that similar. Arrival’s more like Gravity, another movie where the main character’s already experienced parental failure as a trauma, and the movie’s about the aftermath (and, because the way time works in Arrival, also the lead-up to that experience). I honestly don’t think that just being a parent automatically makes a huge difference in how you perceive the movie, although it would obviously probably hit you much, much harder if you’ve ever lost a child or had a child with serious health problems. But that aside, the emotional conflict for Adams’s character in the movie is fairly universal: if you knew, entering a relationship, that it would end badly, would you still do it? If you knew your child would die tragically young, would you still have kids? You don’t need to be a parent to understand those questions.Interstellar, on the other hand, is a movie about being a parent. It’s explicitly, obviously, underlined multiple times in Sharpie marker, about parenting, which I think is a big part of the reason it left some people cold, because if you’re not that interested in parenting, I can see where it could come off as treacly or even obnoxious. To me, it’s an amazing movie for the breadth of parental anxieties it fits into a narrative, and the way that it’s full of details that resonate more when you have parenting experience. Early on, the movie gives us parent-teacher conferences that function as exposition dumps about the near-future world we’re in. But they’re also extremely relatable bad case scenarios that are somewhere in every parent’s mind when they attend a parent-teacher meeting: Cooper’s told that he needs to lower his expectations of his son, who’s not college material, and he’s criticized for the way he’s raising his daughter, who’s bright but has problems with authority and doesn’t get along with other kids. After that we meet Cooper’s father-in-law, and Lithgow nails the feeling of that relationship, where they don’t really fight but he still makes it clear that he agrees with at least some of what the school has said. Throughout, the movie touches on common anxieties that don’t really come up in life unless you’re a parent. How do you tell your child what’s going on in the world without unfairly dumping your anxiety onto them? Later on, the time dilation dramatizes the Cat’s in the Cradle anxiety any working parent has, that they’ll be so wrapped up in work that they’ll miss their kids’ lives. And that’s beyond the more basic “I have to save the world for the sake of my kids” anxiety that hangs over a lot of disaster fiction.Taken together, if you’re a parent, it’s a movie about parenting with some ecological disaster and astrophysics thrown in. If you’re not a parent, you probably view it as a movie about astrophysics and ecological disaster that’s weighed down by a lot of talk about parenting and love.
I noticed a profound change in how movies, and to a lesser extend TV dramas, affected me after my first kid. I didn’t notice it immediately, but I don’t really think I was getting out much those first 2-3 years after having her. It’s been years now, my daughters are 26, and 14, and films with strong emotional content involving families, such as this film, and also Coco, still make me weepy…and I’m 52 freaking years old.
Hell, even working with kids.
Did you ever have to move as a child? Or leave something behind that you loved? It’s not a universal experience, but it is a very common one. My parents were never well-off, but I switched schools in third grade and then we moved across two states when I started middle school. I didn’t have the reaction Riley did, but it was still hard to leave an area I loved and friends I’d once struggled to make behind. And Riley’s never painted as privileged – is her dad gonna make a lot of money? Maybe. It’s implied that he’s working at a start-up which tends to involve long hours and lots of stress along with those rewards. But the point is not that her parents can help her deal with her sadness – it’s that she didn’t even want to acknowledge feeling sad at first. They put a lot of pressure on her to be happy about it, to put on a happy face. It’s a metaphor not just for childhood but for depression. Acknowledging that it’s OK to be sad and that even happy memories can become bittersweet is a good thing.
I moved to a big East Coast city as an adult, and I often miss my midwest hometown, so on some level that should work for me.
And I know that Riley isn’t supposed to be privileged. I just think that the filmmakers were so out of touch that they didn’t recognize how privileged her position is. It’s the “everyone’s middle class” view from the top that so many wealthy creatives in Hollywood have. The most obvious example is of course the huge apartments in Friends, which is easy to poke fun of. But a movie made in 2015 should be more cognizant of these socioeconomic factors.
And I’m not trying to take away anyone’s enjoyment of the film. First and foremost, I’m trying to diagnose why the film doesn’t work for me. I genuinely think Coco is up there with some of the best films they’ve made. And I’ve gotten misty eyed at a number of Pixar movies. I’m not some stone-cold monster. Honest!
well, you’re looking at it from an adult perspective, that’s all.
You’re comparing your adult experience of choosing to move away from your small town to explore opportunities, to a child leaving everything she knows because of someone else choosing to pursue their own opportunities?
“I’m mad at this girl because her father got a better job!”
“Why is she sad? Doesn’t she know how much houses COST in San Francisco!?”I can only assume that this person either was birthed as an adult from their father’s head, Athena-style, or has some form of amnesia that erased their childhood.
Again with the “privilege”? Did anyone else pay attention to that apartment? It was a dump, but it was the kind of place I aspired to when I was washing dishes. A one-income family of three that had a medium 6-figure income would be living… elsewhere in San Francisco.
And as far as working at a start-up goes, Riley’s dad isn’t even one of the principles in the company, is he? Isn’t like one of the background engineers hired in the later seasons of Silicon Valley, paid partially with a salary but also with stock options that are only as valuable moment-to-moment as Pied Piper itself is?
Your take seems more like a superficial impression of the main character’s circumstances rather than what’s depicted in, y’know, the actual movie. I don’t an 11-yr old is going to be very cognizant of the fact that she’s moved to a very desirable piece of real estate, or much care if she was. Her new home is a tiny shithole. All of her things – the stuff that would reassure her in the wake of a move – aren’t there. Her dad is distant due to the demands of his new cash-shovelling-into-wallet job. Her friends are all gone, and worse, seem to be moving on without her. Her favourite food sucks now.Oh but hey, she has a top-notch therapist to look forward to, so what the fuck’s she whining about, right? Bollocks.
You’re right that from Riley’s perspective, this is largely invisible. A young girl can’t see her own privilege. But as a viewer, I can’t just ignore it.
Besides, Hollywood films have dealt with class and socioeconomic status as a theme before. It’s surprising how often movies from the 80s grapple with class. By the time we get to the 90s, that’s arguably forgotten. One of the reasons why American Beauty looks ridiculous now is that it’s about an upper middle class guy whining about living the good life.Obviously, Inside Out isn’t the same thing. No matter our situation, we all go through adolescence. But the real world just intrudes on how much I can enjoy this film.
“The real world” is that a little girl is experiencing a chemical imbalance in her brain due to the trauma of movie across the country, to a dramatically different city, right as she enters freaking middle school.
Riley’s privilege doesn’t prevent her from being scared and lonely or from missing her friends or from feeling powerless. Which is why she is sad.
this movie is about this stuff everyone faces called feelings and you’ve somehow made up a criticism about how unrelatable it is…..r u a robot
trying to imagine his impression of a teenage girl who copes with the loss of her entire social circle by being really proud of her dad for earning more money
In fairness…that extra money will have WAY more of an effect on her life than a bigger, nicer house, with a backyard, near all of her friends and a hockey pond!
yeah Inside Out moved me.moved me…to a bigger HOUSE!
Thor Almighty, Rich people can be sad too, dude. That aside, the family isn’t presented as that well off. Yes they have insurance, that doesn’t mean a child with depression isn’t worthy of empathy or sympathy.
I know we’re are having a reckoning with wealth disparity, but I don’t think we want to get to a place where we’re “Fuck your depression, your parents are rich, so you’ll be fine.”
I think my major hurdle here is that I just can’t relate to the main character’s dilemma. Sure, navigating teenage emotions are universal, but being upset because you have to move across the country so that you and your family can make boatloads of money just isn’t relatable to me.Riley isn’t the main character. Joy is.
A person isn’t the main character, a brain function is. There’s a disconnect here that doesn’t work for some of us, it’s not a knock on people who do enjoy it.
I didn’t say it was, but RBatty’s criticism that he can’t relate to the main character seems misguided when he’s misidentified who the main character is.
Thank you! The fact that Riley’s drama isn’t particularly notable is part of the point. The movie’s real drama is between Joy and Sadness, not between Riley and her parents.
Man, you’re getting a lot of bullshit for this very reasonable response. Inside Out made me cry and it made me laugh, but I also think it has all of the issues you’ve raised and it’s very mechanical in its heart-string-tugging. I mentioned this below (above? Fuck Kinja) but the basic disconnect between the character of Riley having emotions and the emotions themselves being the real characters is very weird for me, it makes her passive and not very interesting. And the emotions are by nature generally one-dimensional. Riley’s biggest action is to not do something (run away from home) and I remember thinking about how it unintentionally echoed another animated young girl, Chihiro in Spirited Away — she is faced with adversity and does stuff. Riley gets off the bus, Chihiro gets to work and gets on the train. The movies are making different points, but one is more interesting and more mysterious in its maturity.And this — “The film is supposed to be about something nearly universal, but the particulars actually make it a story about extreme privilege, and the people at Pixar were completely blind to this aspect of their story” — is absolutely true! It doesn’t preclude empathy with Riley but the background of their lives is presented in a casually assumptive way. The real tell for me was at the end, when we take a tour of other characters’ emotional headspaces. It’s very funny and clever, and apparently the guy who drives a bus is just a bus driver in his own head. Maybe Pixar isn’t going to produce a Paterson, but that blithe assumption is there again and it’s off-putting.
Well, I am gently critiquing one of Pixar’s most beloved films, so I expected some pushback.I mentioned this in another comment, but I probably should have said this in my original post: I’m mostly thinking about my own reaction and why I don’t identify to the film or the characters in the same way that I have to countless other Pixar movies.
If you can go into this film and just take on the perspective of Riley and forget about socioeconomic status, or if you notice it but can relate or are empathetic regardless, then more power to you. But it’s still weird that Pixar creates what’s supposed to be this relatable “middle class” family and then has them move smack dab into the center of the most expensive city in the damn country.
it’s weird cause you say things like they would justify withholding empathy for these characters but the things you say…are just sort of neutral descriptions.am i missing something? is it bad to take on big opportunities now? how is riley somehow a target for what her father did? am i forgetting a scene where Joy makes Sadness use a different fountain or something
It seems the real problem is that you’re incapable of looking at the world outside of a class conflict lens and have somehow conflated that with a fault of the movie. Which is fine, you’re entitled to your own perspectives, but the fact Riley has problems despite being upper middle class isn’t really tone deaf storytelling the way you seem to think it is. For gods sake, you fault the movie because the family might have health insurance, it’s ridiculous.It’s not a story about the woes of being financially insecure, it’s a story about a child with a child’s view of the world dealing with change and depression. It’s not like her parents moved to an estate with ponies and a swimming pool – all Riley knows is that she lived in a nice town and had lots of friends and now she lives in a cramped rowhouse in a crowded and busy city where nothing is the same. I’m not rich but I don’t find it hard to relate to the movie just because her dad works for a startup and maybe they can afford the deductible to get her some Prozac.
I liked Inside Out, but I def. had a twinge of what you’re talking about. It very much felt like “rich programmers at Pixar telling their sob story” to this poor midwestern kid who made that trip (albeit to the East Coast rather than the West Coast). When you’re life is so great, you’ll actually miss it, was my thought. That wasn’t my experience. I couldn’t wait to leave.
The startup job may be paying Reilly’s dad a lot of money, but as you say, living in SF is very pricey (by some measures worse than Manhattan) so he might not be making that much after living expenses. Plus there were signs that the startup wasn’t doing that well and that he might have to lay off a number of his subordinates if they didn’t get more funding. And presumably without more funding, eventually he too won’t have a job.
That was my thought as well. Only about 1 in 10 start-ups actually succeed, so this big move could end up with losing their life in Minnesota AND ending up broke and in debt (depending on the financing arrangements for the start-up.)
Heck, there are some areas of SanFran right now where the cost of living is more expensive than Beverly Hills. That city remains the rich community stereotype in movies it’s always been, but it doesn’t seem to have clicked for anyone how much SanFran has changed in twenty years.
However, I can get past this and enjoy the movie.
Also, if you’re an 11 year old who loves hockey, moving from a big house with a backyard by a big pond to a shithole in SF won’t ACTUALLY be ameliorated by the fact that your dad has more spending money.A condo in Manhattan costs more than a ranch house in Bergen with a pool in the backyard and plenty of neighbors, walking distance from the school.Which do you think the average 11 year old would prefer?
But the financial concerns belong to the parents, not Riley. As for “privilege”, how many parents discuss the particulars of the family’s finances with the kids? All my parents would ever say was “we can’t afford that right now”, and that ended the discussion.
I’m with you. I kept thinking that my friends and I had had experiences by that age that made this character’s reaction to a move with her loving nuclear family seem so overblown. It’s a scenario built on the premise that this is the most harrowing thing that has ever happened to Riley, which, good for you I guess kid, but that’s a super privileged bubble.
I almost think it would have been better to make the kid a lot younger, actually. I suspect most kids are a lot deeper and introspective in their emotions than Riley is depicted as being at 11.
Also there’s some super mid-20th century gender stereotyping going on with the parents, but that doesn’t draw me out of the story nearly as much. Some people are just like that.
yeah why would a young teenage girl care about losing the only friends she ever knew and leaving the place she thought of as home her whole life?after all, her dad will get paid more, so he might up her allowance a little. and they can get her a therapist for the sad crap anyway, so i don’t see why we have to make a whole movie about processing emotions. killer point, Roger Peebert.
So I guess those of us who are Millennials that got screwed by the housing crisis can go ahead and write off Up since how could we even relate to a senior who could afford a nice house on a balloon seller’s salary?
The SF thing bugged me a little bit too. It’s hard to set that aside but I kind of got past it by holding close to the girl’s outlook. I think even though Inside Out’s overall concept is solid, the two hurtles are moving to SF (where most of us who don’t live there are thinking “Oh, Boo-Hoo kid”) and the clown character. Plus, by the time Inside Out came out, as a Pixar fan, the formula was starting to show. You knew inherently where the emotional beats would be. Inside Out, as an audience member, (at least with me) I had to actively push through the stumbling blocks. Maybe it’s because the movie is so much about being inside your head, everyone watching has their internal switches tripped likewise. I got misty eyed in the end, but it was work in a way that the start of Up or the end of TS3 wasn’t. Maybe its passive vs active viewing. The SF issue was an even bigger problem (among others) in Disney’s Big Hero 6. And I didn’t really like Wall-E. As a show for little kids, I guess it works better, but I’m already on board with not destroying the planet. I didn’t need two hours of smacking me upside the head with it. For me that’s an example where the Pixar high-concept overwhelmed the picture.
Because he exists just to die. It’s the most emotionally manipulative thing Pixar has ever done.
Bing Bong still makes my wife cry, but it never really hit me.My daughter is 9 and getting near the age where this movie really has an impact… it is already starting to hit home more than before. She saw it in the theaters and liked it, but didn’t know why everyone was crying at the end. But as others have said, that end and the realization that you you can’t let fear, anger, and disgust take over and you need to acknowledge sadness still wrecks me every time we watch it. Having a daughter close to Riley’s age just makes it worse.Well, now I need to go take some Claritan… it’s allergies damnit!
You’re not alone.
I didn’t react strongly to the elephant scene either, but that may be due to the fact that I was all cried out from that Lava short they showed before Inside Out:
I didn’t cry over Lava, but all and all I had a stronger emotional reaction to it than to Inside Out.
I will defend this short to my dying day. Its not too saccharine damn it! That song is a beautiful homage to that Hawaiian singer who’s name escapes me. The one who did Over the Rainbow.
I love the Lava short too! It’s beautiful and tells the local legend of the 2 volcanos. It still moves me to tears whenever I watch it though, lol.
Its beautiful, its well animated, and I have a personal connection to it. Can’t help but love it.
Do you have kids? Because I think the emotional impact of that scene is really different for parents. BingBong fading away isn’t actually sad for Riley, precisely, because she’s grown out of imaginary friends and that’s normal. But, as a parent, having kids outgrow things like that is bittersweet, and the whole idea of them forgetting pivotal, vital parts of their earlier experiences is a tough pill to swallow.
I wasn’t stone-faced, but I’m with you that he did not get the strong reaction from me that Pixar obviously wanted me to get.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
{Empathy Island collapses into the void}
I did have imaginary friends when I was little, and I did cry slightly for Bing Bong, but it wasn’t enough to get over my feeling of “OK, can we go back to Riley now?”
Bing Bong was the only scene where I wasn’t emotionally shattered. This movie came out right as my kids (both girls) were around the same age, so all I could think of was my kids feeling the same way. It wrecked me (I had the same reaction reading Ramona the Pest around the time my youngest was five).
Interesting. I don’t think we can use this as a wholesale replacement for “click all the pictures that contain street signs” as a test to filter out the ‘bots, but it might be useful as an alternative.
This movie reduces me to an ugly, sobbing mess…but I can handle the Bing Bong scene just fine.Now, if we’re talking “You guys need me to be happy but I can’t!”…that’s a different story.
You are not of the body!
It was a nice moment, but I found the scenes with Riley infinitely more affecting than any of the characters in her head.
Neither, partly because you could see it coming the second he was introduced, and partly because it’s almost identical to the superior Big Hero 6’s emotional climax. Baymax over Bing Bong any day.
I have always found the aging process emotional and moving. So guilty as charged I cried. Sue me.
I always get more emotional watching the scene discussed above than Bing Bong, though it is still sad.
You truly are history’s greatest monster.
yeah because you put him in YOUR HEAD
You have to specify which Bing Bong scene, to be fair.I didn’t cry when Bing Bong disappeared. I saw it coming a mile away. It did put a lump in my throat, but Joy moved on way too fast for it to really settle and tear out my heart.No, the Bing Bong scene that did (and does) make me cry every stinking time was the one just previous, when Bing Bong sat at the edge of the abyss and stared disconsolately down into the darkness and said, in the smallest voice imaginable for an imaginary friend, “Riley can’t be done with me…”Goddammit, now I’m crying again. Thanks a lot, brain.
Bing Bong is a cute character and a great voice performance, but that whole scene is maudlin and overdone and cheesy, like an overproduced love song. On the other hand, the opening montage of Riley as a toddler is a hearstring-tugging machine, and it works for me every time.
“Try to imagine the meeting in which that idea got pitched to a bunch of suits responsible for ensuring that Pixar’s stockholders won’t see their memories of buying shares turn from yellow to blue.”Thanks for that. (Should have been Disney shareholders, though)
Yea, that’s pretty good
Credit to the suits that they trusted Pixar enough to pull it off.
This movie is great, that’s all I have to say.I do hope SOUL will be just as good (though, can Disney stop with the “one word title” trend?)
I still rewatch this every now and then and I STILL absolutely sob when Riley says she just wants to go home. I’m from Minnesota and had moved right at the end of middle school (I didn’t want to leave) — and for some reason that scene hit a deep emotional spot. Until then, Finding Nemo had always been my favorite – but Inside Out may have usurped that position.
Not only should this movie be shown to young children in school, there should be accompanying teaching/learning materials that go along with it. Color-coding and assigning cartoon personalities to emotions was an absolutely brilliant approach, and if more people had the insight to address and react to what they are feeling at any given moment, we’d all be a hell of a lot better off than we are now. This movie shows emotions working together to create a better and more thoughtful human being. That’s important.Plus, Joy IS Leslie Knope, and more Leslie Knope is never a bad thing. Louis Black was a masterful choice to play Anger, but wouldn’t it have been fun to hear Ron Swanson at his most surly in that role? I think so. Ron’s a big teddy bear underneath it all, though, so yeah, maybe Louis Black was the right choice after all.
Oh god yes. There is a whole management school here. I can’t count the number of times it would be great to know what someone is really, for example, angry about, or just have them admit that they are angry or afraid rather than pretending everything is fine.
The backbone of this movie is a content management system for emotions. It provides a way to identify what you’re feeling, how to address it, and not only how to react to it, but also a way to counterbalance and course correct those feelings with… check this out… your OTHER emotions. And then, it gives you valid reasoning for why feeling ANY of those emotions is perfectly okay!
I love the view inside mom’s head, where we see all of her emotions working together to achieve a goal. This is the perfect depiction of the mature, well adjusted human. And then there’s the cat …
All the different views inside different people’s heads was great. I think they looked inside my head for the one of the cat.
The views inside the parents were interesting too in that the mother’s sadness was in the center of the console and the father’s anger was at his.
The young boy was the best“GIRL! GIRL! GIRL!”
I also love the little details, like how Joy drives Riley, Sadness drives Mom, and Anger drives Dad.
My daughter has been doing art therapy, and most of it’s about helping her identify emotions. I heard her talking to the therapist about Inside Out the other day, so it made an impression. Her favorite feelings-identifying activity is this worksheet the therapist sent w/thermometers for various emotions that she can color up to the appropriate line. She was getting annoyed with me the other day and adding more and more to the annoyed and angry thermometers each time I asked her a question – real time feedback! 🙂
Emotions are hard! Attaching them to tangible objects is always a good idea.
My experience with Offerman is limited, but he seems like he deals in more of a quiet rage. Anger needed to be someone who could snap all the way to 10 at any moment and who would need to stay there for long stretches, so Black was the perfect choice.
Absolutely. I think I just like hearing Offerman and Poehler interact more than anything.
There are lessons plans about it. Next time I teach Health class for a prolonged period of time I will likely show it. So long as I’m not repeating something from earlier grades.
Great! Yeah, I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of it this way.
I agree. Heck, I was 38 when I saw it, and it made ME completely realign how I considered my emotions, thoughts, and memories.
Yeah, I watch it every now and again just to realign myself a bit. Everyone I recommend it to loves it.
watched it with a child psychologist and she thought it was excellent. Interestingly, she thought there should have been one more emotion character (can’t remember what it was) but apart from that, she was certain that they’d done their research and spoken to the right people.
A former in-law of mine is a speech language pathologist, and she hadn’t even heard of the movie when I told her how I good it was. She reluctantly went to go see it (she wasn’t much of a fan of animation to begin with), and the next time I saw her, she had about half a notebook full of notes about it that she wanted to implement into her practice. So that was nice.
Was it surprise? I there was a thinkpiece for that.
god, I wish I could remember… I’ll ask her and get back to you.
Amy Poehler was perfectly cast in Inside Out but I will never understand why people love Leslie Knope so much. I could never enjoy that show consistently because it felt like longform hagiography and she didn’t feel like a real person to me (not even a “real person” in sitcom land).
Pixar’s high-concept films have a weird effect on me. I get caught up in the world, really enjoy them, usually wish they could run longer … and strangely, have no desire to ever see them again. I’ve never been able to explain why, I’m usually someone that can re-watch an enjoyable film to the brink of contempt. Maybe it’s the freshness of the concept that I really like, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Anyone else?
I don’t know if this is the *best* Pixar movie, but from my perspective it’s easily the most meaningful.It validates unhappiness – sadness isn’t something to be suppressed or moved on from. It’s an essential part of the human experience. I can see it being the springboard for any number of healthy parent/child discussions. Many of my friends who suffer from depression have told me that they felt validated by Inside Out in a very powerful way.Put it succinctly – this is fucking art.
Inside out came out right after we had moved. Not out of state but far enough away for it to matter for my oldest son. I remember watching this with my wife and sons and just balling
*bawling
That too
Bawling is a baller move
Username checks out.
This editing is less “pedantic” and more “required so the proper authorities are not notified.”
Clearly you and I have different definitions of what ballin’ is.
Now there’s 20 years of therapy-in-the-making.
Funniest scene in any Pixar movie: Riley talks to a guy her same age and we see what’s happening in HIS mind: Alarms sounding! Girl! Girl! Girl!
I’m going to have to give this film another try:The first time I saw it in the theater on release, I really enjoyed it and the themes it brought to the table. Obviously great animation with a lot of clever ideas and storytelling executed in the usual high-level Pixar quality …Then over Christmas I saw this again, this time at home with my mom as we were test-driving Disney+ … and neither of us could make it past the first 20 minutes. Sadness effing things up repeatedly in the control just seemed really ham-fisted — terribly, terribly lazy and contrived to the point where we just looked at each other, said “do you think this is actually good?” and switched over to a repeat of the Great British Baking Show …HAVING SAID THAT — I really do remember liking it a lot the first time, so there has to be something that just completely wiffed on that second viewing. Hopefully a third time will be the proverbial charm, because I really don’t like that I had such a negative reaction the second time around …
I rewatched it on a plane recently and feel like it is so exposition-heavy at the beginning that it’s a little tedious on second viewing. But the back half of the movie still hit home for me.
I adore this movie, but I admit that it does hit you with a ton of infodumping right from the start. It’s kind of inevitable, though, because the whole system of how Riley’s mind works needs to be explained as directly as possible for the movie to make sense. It’s not like Toy Story where they can just gloss over it, “in this world toys are alive, just go with it.” Without an explanation of what Core Memories and the like are, the movie just can’t work. But if you already know all that stuff, then yeah, the first few scenes are a slog. But I’m really not sure how else they could present it.
Fascinating. Normally it tends to be the other way around for me. I do think Inside Out is Pixar’s strangest movie conceptually. I remember liking it, but I haven’t watched it in a long time, and I wonder if I’ll find those parts annoying now too.
“Sadness effing things up repeatedly in the control just seemed really ham-fisted — terribly, terribly lazy and contrived”It’s not to me; it’s Sadness constantly trying to impact Riley as much as the others, because she’s constantly repressed by Joy, although it doesn’t look like that at the beginning because it wants the viewer to identify with Joy as the “right” one and Sadness as an antagonistic force. As the movie reveals over the course in the movie, Joy’s constant stamping on Sadness makes her feel worthless and unwanted, but the film takes the stance that Joy is clearly in the wrong for wanting herself as the overriding emotion for Riley to be happy, instead of understanding that Riley needs all her emotions, ESPECIALLY Sadness, to truly be happy in life. Sadness’s compulsiveness to affect everything in the beginning is her quiet way in trying to make herself matter, because the movie shows that she really, really matters in the grand scheme of emotions.
No, I absolutely get the underlying concept — as I said, I liked it a lot the first time around. Just getting to fleshing-out that concept seemed a lot less … fluid? sophisticated? organic! the second time around, for some reason, to the point where it was unwatchable. Hopefully a third viewing will set things right again =)
it is a huge concept to pin to some fuzzy colorful folks. i remember it being clunky at times to convey all that abstraction in cutesy CG but i was fine holding my breath for the cathartic parts.
Inside Out spoke to me in a way that few movies ever have, because I lived Riley’s experiences. Like her, I was uprooted from by home and everything I knew and loved when I was around her age, taken thousands of miles away by my parents and thrown into a new life I barely understood, where everything wasn’t completely alien but was just different enough to be confusing and unsettling. And there wasn’t any going back. Watching this movie, I felt Riley’s confusion and pain so vividly it hurt at times, and this scene in particular makes me tear up every time I watch it. I don’t know if I’ve ever related to a fictional character as much I as I related to Riley Anderson.(Or, for entirely different reasons, this poor little bastard.)God, I love this movie.But mark my words, Pete Docteur. Between Bing-Bong and Riley’s confession to her parents, one day I will find you and drown you in my tears.
Lol, “Girl Alert” might be Pixar’s single greatest joke ever
Didn’t Pixar do a short where Riley’s first date is with that boy?
It’s been awhile since I watched it, but I think it’s about the two hanging out and the parents not knowing if she’s on a date or not.
Just watched it – absolutely cracked me up.
(Dad’s Head Alert): BOY! BOY! BOY! BOY!
Yes, it’s on the DVD for the film. Probably on Disney+, as well.
They did! It’s called “Riley’s First Date”.
“Sir, detecting back talk!”
As I’ve said elsewhere in the thread, the main story of Inside Out didn’t really work on me. What did work (in proportion to their screen time) was this and the couple of other scenes that suggested Riley and her classmate’s emerging sexualities. I know that sounds kind of pervy given that we are talking about cartoon 11-year-olds, but I thought the Herman’s Head conceit was used to much greater effect in those little scenes than in the main plot about Riley’s sadness over the move. Now, whether a main thread about sixth grade crushes could support a whole alternate universe version of Inside Out at feature length I don’t know. Probably not.
It’s a brilliant moment, but for me, I think one of the best gags is Louis Black yelling, ‘Congratulations, San Francisco! You’ve ruined pizza!’As a ten-year resident of San Francisco, that might’ve hit me a little harder than most.
The joke here seems to be based upon the concept that somebody would just order 2 slices of whatever-you-feel-like-giving-us-without-even-telling-us-until-it’s-served pizza. I haven’t seen that trope since a 1995 episode of Pete & Pete, & it didn’t make any gorram sense then either.
‘Gorram’ ain’t exactly a logic bomb, either. You may be overanalyzing a sight gag in a cartoon a little too often.
Well, maybe “not until it’s served” part is a stretch, but SF has places like the famous worker-collective Arizmendi Bakery that literally just has one type of pizza each day. Buy it or don’t.
Never heard of the place. But, like, you know what flavor it is before you buy it, right?
Yeah, they have it on a board.
Remember when Wile E. Coyote used to fall off all those cliffs? I wonder why the cartoon never addressed the fact that that would’ve killed him.
Hardy-har.
When the joke is built upon people not wanting the toppings they were served, it genuine makes you wonder why they didn’t just order something else in the first place.
Keep digging, man. Maybe someday you’ll figure out where Bugs Bunny was keeping all that makeup and fruit to put on his head.
Go ahead, keep on harassing me with false equivalencies. That makes you feel powerful, eh, big man?
Powerful? No, not really. It does tell me you’re ridiculously thin-skinned when it comes to this shit, though.Relax, friend. It’s just the internet. It’s just cartoons.
And dollar pizza in NYC, too. You either buy what they have for a dollar, or you don’t buy pizza. (And that shit is barely pizza.)But really, though – it’s a sight gag in an animated movie. It’s like trying to make sense of why Elmer Fudd didn’t die when Bugs stuck a stick of dynamite in his mouth. It doesn’t need to stick to this many layers of reality to still be effective.
It’s not really a sight gag, it’s a lazy rehash of “culture wars” hacks.
No, that’s just like your opinion, man. Pretty sure its definition is still very much a sight gag.
This is really interesting – it’s a pretty specific joke about the Bay Area, where there are bakeries that serve exactly one kind of pizza per day, and it’s often covered with veggies. The two most famous ones (Arizmendi and Cheeseboard Pizza Collective) are employee-owned coops where the employees are particularly inked up. So the scene barely plays as exaggeration within that context. But it’s also true that the scene is poking fun at superficially “West Coast” stuff. Because the West Coast essentially parodies itself.
“First the Hawaiians, and now you!”
Im in my 20s and this film already hits like a truck. I don’t dare imagine what it’ll be when I have kids.
This is probably the last Pixar movie I’ll ever see. It was messagey as hell but it had its moments. As a reasonably stoic guy I have to admit my family up and moved a good distance when I was 14 and it was intensely difficult for me. Not the move so much as the fact we moved from a city and school I loved to a small hick town with a dismal school. I’m pretty much a “suck it up and deal with it” kind of person but that, not a horrible car wreck, being hit by a train (no kidding) or my divorce is the thing that still haunts me.
Oops, The first seven minutes of “Up” is one of the best short films I’ve ever seen.
The rest of Up was still great, but couldn’t possibly top the opening to the movie. Inside Out edges them out as my favorite just because the movie as a whole was great from beginning to end.
My favorite Pixar movie of all time.
And one of my all-time favorites, period. Easily top 3. I consider this a freakin’ masterpiece.
20 years after seeing Toy Story, Inside-Out finally drilled something in my head. No matter how convoluted the premise of a Pixar movie sounds on paper, just go with it. Far more often than not, they make it work. As of this point in time, I would also nominate Inside-Out as Pixar’s last truly great film (I liked Coco a lot, but it just didn’t quite reach the same transcendent level). I have my hopes raised for Soul, however.
I’m usually skeptical about their ideas, then blown away when i see it. Onward didn’t look interesting at all, but I’m sure it still will be at least at a higher standard than most animation/kid’s fare. a movie about a house floating via balloons? what?! Rats cooking? Oh come on. a robot alone on a polluted earth? Monsters that scare kids as a job? Didn’t Nickelodeon do that?cars? CARS?!! (even when I finally got to Cars I could enjoy it. it wasn’t the same level as their other works, but I was pleasantly surprised)Inside Out was an exception, I went in not seeing that much hype, but have always loved “people running humans like a machine inside them” stories, so the idea immediately got my interest. And even then they went beyond my expectations. Any other film would’ve had a stupid villain out of sadness or anger, or some sort of depression spell. Inside Out didn’t need a villain. Despite the crazy concept everything felt somehow like a natural turn of events.
That Pixar took the premise of Herman’s Head and made something that reduced a metric fuckton of viewers (including me) to tears is something.
Fun fact: Both Inside Out and Herman’s Head are based on an old Disney cartoon short called Reason and Emotion. Along with presenting us with little metaphorical people who live in our minds, it was mostly about how to resist Nazi propaganda. Yep!
Maybe I just watched The Secret of NIMH too many times as a kid, but I had zero qualms about Ratatouille.
am i crazy or do all the Pixar movies we think of as unimpeachable all come from that one ‘talk’ they referenced in the WALL-E trailer?
Onward is an odd concept and a tough concept to sell, but give it a go, it’s excellent – very funny, with some unexpected emotional depth. Not surprising, given it’s Pixar, but unexpected in the context of the movie.
I also have high hopes for Soul. From the musical standpoint, I’m looking forward to seeing what Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have in store for our listening pleasure. Wish we didn’t have to wait until November to see Soul, which was supposed to kick off the trio of movies I was excited for in 2020 (Soul, Tenet, Dune).
I’m thankful that Pixar continues to make shorts, as I find they are more likely to push the boundaries and capture that creative spark found in the great Pixar movies. It’s interesting, though – a couple of the great Pixar movies are great simply because of the first several minutes of the film (Wall-E, Up.) You could almost treat those parts as short films in themselves.
Coco and Wall-E are the best pixar movies.
I would like to commend Pixar for featuring parents in several of their movies who are actually good parents, who really try hard and do the best they can. So much children’s entertainment is based on parents who are idiots or absent.
Yeah, especially this movie you could feel the dad’s emotions on having to move the family and stress of his new job. You could see where he was coming from (and his own emotion people) where in most disney movies it would just be the kid’s perspective.
I think it also would’ve undercut the film’s primary message. Knowing that they were good parents who screwed up in a very human way (putting so much pressure on her to be happy) makes it relatable and normal. If they were crappy parents, it would be too easy to blame Riley’s emotions on that.
“So much children’s entertainment is based on parents who are idiots or absent.”Which allows the children to be protagonists without having to bother with what the parents are up to. I prefer that mode myself.
I also liked how they got how Riley was trying to protect her parents from her pain. I remember moving when I was Riley’s age, being bitterly sad and lonely, and working so hard to be “good” so I wouldn’t make my parents sad.
God, I identified with that so hard.
I think media emphasizes the kids who lash out at their parents because of pain. And those kids definitely exist. But that wasn’t me as a kid. I was more likely to unnecessarily hide things from my parents for fear of “worrying them”.
Pixar parents can’t hold a candle to Ghibli parents.“Hey mom, I decided two minutes ago to go on my year-long journey of self-discovery away from home. I will take the cat, a broom, and $30.00″“I trust and encourage your decisions. Write home when you’re able!”
To me, it was even more important to see that inside Riley’s parents heads, it was anger and sadness, respectively, that were at the controls. It really drove home the message that neither anger, nor sadness, are bad things, because we were seeing two otherwise well-adjusted, empathetic people who love each other, and love Riley, but whose anger and sadness are nevertheless firmly in the driver’s seat. We associate anger with things like rage, or something that otherwise represents a loss of control, when the worst that Riley’s father does is act very sure that he totally nailed that parenting challenge, when he equally clearly did not.
I think it’s worth saying that not only does this movie do a tremendous job of portraying sadness, it does an even more powerful job of portraying depression and despair. In many stories those are shown as just being “sad, but MORE sad.” But it’s a different thing, similar but not congruent to sadness. Riley’s detachment from her life, as the bridges break and things go grey, is so very real. That detachment, and the desperation that it creates, is what leads her to leave.The numbness drives her away. The sadness is what brings her home.
Good point. Depression in fiction is usually just portrayed as mere deep sadness, or a reaction to bad things happening. This was a far more accurate portrayal. A lesser film would have Riley overcome depression by having Joy defeating Sadness in a rousing battle to the finish, but once again, Pixar makes the less cliched but far more effective choice.
The numbness drives her away. The sadness is what brings her home. THIS. Inside Out is my favorite Pixar movie, and a big reason is because it’s an amazing and very real depiction of depression. I’m a 51 year-old man with no kids, and I weep like an infant every time I watch it. It’s a powerful film.
Yep. I wrote my piece elsewhere in this thread, but this is one of the sharpest and articulate movies about depression and isolation I’ve ever seen.
this movie made me cry loud horrible gasping sobs in a full movie theatre so that was fun
Inside Out did not work on me. I mean, I liked it just fine for all the reasons you normally like Pixar movies: well imagined world building, perfect casting and good voice work, clever jokes, and beautiful animation. But “it’s okay to feel sad” never felt like much of theme to me. That Riley would be sad to leave Minnesota and feel compelled to hide it from her parents makes sense, but that just doesn’t seem like an epic enough emotional journey to match the adventure we see Joy and Co. go through. I’m glad it really speaks to some people, but I just don’t see it.
I viewed this movie through a slightly different lens than most people, I think. When it came out my mom was in a hospice and we were waiting for her to die from cancer. I saw this movie a few times during some breaks that I had. I was talking to a hospice volunteer one day about why she volunteers there and the different emotions that surround death (mine was afraid of watching my mother die but also hoping she would be out of pain soon, she found working there very fulfilling) and I recommended this movie to her. Even at almost 40 I thought Inside Out had something new to say to me in a way I hadn’t visualized before.I saw A Monster Calls a couple of weeks after she passed though, and I have never ugly cried so hard in public before. It was very cleansing.
Inside Out is kind of my #5 Pixar film, but mostly out of default since there aren’t any below that I actually like (Coco is exempt because I haven’t seen it).I love the beginning. I love the ending. But pretty much everything about Joy and Sadness’ journey back to the central command center felt like filler. Yes, even the Bing Bong stuff. I kind of get what they were going for in those scenes, but man, I couldn’t care less. I’d probably enjoyed the movie a lot more if the runtime had been cut in half.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that Joy is one saucy little minx. That little dress! That pixie hair style! That all-night-long energy! Yowza!!!Bing Bong was pretty hot too.
I fell into the same trap I did with Cars, where I got caught up in weird questions. Like why do the emotions show other emotions? If she’s a kid, why are they already grown? And why are some of this little girl’s emotions… dudes? They establish that mom’s are all female and the dad’s are all male. It’s my favorite scene in Inside Out, and I probably would have got a kick out of watching a whole movie of characters’ brains dealing with other character’s brains.
I know it’s silly, and the logistics of it aren’t important, but it was distracting enough to preoccupy the little guys in my own head, I guess. Anyway, I like the movie well enough, though, thanks to the journey through the mind (abstract thought! lol) I never had an imaginary friend, but the Bing Bong scene still slays on a philosophical level. Imagine your whole existence needing to rely on another person loving you… This is a metaphor for the human being.
I admire the psychology of this movie. Like the Hulk, my big reveal is that I’m sad all the time, so the message of the film is poignant- even if I still wonder why Disgust is one of the characters. Disgust is more of a reaction than an emotion; Or at least, of the dominant emotions, which can be a person’s entire state of being, as so eloquently stated on The Good Place:
If she’s a kid, why are they already grown? I don’t know that they are? They actually act pretty naive and childlike, which fits since they’re only as old and as mature as Riley is. Of course, they’re all voiced by a bunch of comedians in their 40’s so it does confuse things quite a bit. And why are some of this little girl’s emotions… dudes My theory: Some people’s gender identities are more complex than others, and your subconscious is usually the first to know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I still wonder why Disgust is one of the characters. The five main characters were chosen based on the research of Dr. Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has a consulting credit on the movie. He theorizes that there are six primary human emotions, so the writers made those emotions the main characters. During the writing process they cut one of the emotions, Surprise, because his personality was too similar to Fear’s. Like why do the emotions show other emotions?
My take on why Riley’s emotions are a mix of male and female was that strict gender roles are mostly social constructs that don’t occur naturally to kids. By the time you become an adult most people have internalised concepts of gender, so it could be that all their emotions flip to be male or female. But Riley hasn’t reached that point yet, so she can have a mix.
if a lady car gets pregnant, does she eventually have to stop driving because the bump pushes the undercarriage too high for the wheels to touch the ground?
We know that the Cars all have punny names and their history mimics our own, so was there a Jesus Chrysler?
French newspaper Carlie Hubcap gets caught in the middle of a worldwide controversy for publishing a cartoon of the prophet Mercedez
The reason why some of Riley’s emotions are dudes is obvious. Pixar/Disney marketing did not want to go with an all-girl cast.
Equally cynical theory: women aren’t allowed to be Angry.
They establish that mom’s are all female and the dad’s are all male.I figured is was based on “sense of self.” The adult emotions aren’t actually male or female, they’re just “dressed up” as the person they’re inside. The dad just thinks of himself as having a mustache, and the mom thinks of herself as having her hair in a ponytail. So their emotions wear those things.You can see from her islands that none of the things really important to Riley have to do with her appearance (yet) so her emotions are neutral.And, uh, if you want to see someone personality has been taken over by disgust:
Lol, touche!
The sigh Riley lets out at the end is arguably the greatest sigh in movie history. There is SO MUCH emotional weight to just that one little act.
This movie has affected me more than most films. I’ve been a lifelong sufferer of clinical depression (even briefly having suicidal tendencies) and this movie is so smart and articulate about how a person shuts down slowly over time, how helpless and alone it not only makes you feel, but intensifies how much you want to steep yourself in that feeling. The part that broke me on the first viewing is when she gets on the bus while the emotion board locks the feelings out from”using” Riley. “Guys… We can’t make her feel ANYTHING.” Good lord that was on point it immediately broke me down in my seat (after already been a blubbering mess from earlier emotional points… And “Lava”). And the scene where she explains to her parents what’s going on is equally affecting; my parents didn’t step wrong in raising me so that must have been a helpless, second-guessing feeling when they learned I not only had a mental health issue, they didn’t even KNOW I had a problem. The family coming to an understanding and empathy of their situation is so sweet and wonderful. And I love that it’s so smart in knowing that sadness is a necessity; lesser films would’ve positioned Joy in the right, to always be happy no matter what. But we need the sad moments just as much.That the movie is also hilarious, perfectly cast, and a visual delight makes it one of Pixar’s greatest triumphs. I have it right there with Up as their magnum opus
Yeah, this film is, bar none, the single best representation of depression I’ve ever seen on film, not the least because it found a way to dramatize depression, which by its nature is almost impossible to dramatize. Plus, it gave a language to help people describe what’s happening in their own heads. Even if it weren’t sidesplitting (I’m personally torn between the abstract thought chamber and the deep storage team trolling the rest of the brain with the advertising jingle as the funniest bit), it would be one of the best animated films ever.That you then add in moments like “Take her to the moon for me”? It passed brilliant, and made its way firmly into the realm of sublime. It is a rare piece of media that doesn’t simply touch you, but actively moves you see and interact with the world differently. You know the ones. The Lord of the Rings. The Good Place. To Kill a Mockingbird.Inside Out belongs in that pantheon.
Does anyone remember the cut someone made that left out all the ‘emotions’ scenes and just made it about Riley? That tore me apart.
It’s pretty ingenious how this movie’s story still makes perfect sense (but is far less entertaining) if you remove all inside-the-mind scenes. It allows for the possibility that all the mind scenes aren’t “Really” happening but are just metaphors for Riley’s mental state. Or maybe they are real. It’s down to what the viewer is more comfortable with.
The focus on the importance of being able to feel and express sadness reminded me of one of the parenting books I read before I had my 1st kid. It had a part that talked about how boys are discouraged from showing sadness, starting at a very young age, but are allowed to indulge anger more than girls are, and how that results in lots of grown men channeling their sadness into anger instead. Sadness is natural and important, and when people can’t express it ugly things happen.
I really love this movie. Instantly one of my top Pixar films. And since I’ve never articulated this out loud to anyone, I love how most of the emotions have “negative” connotations when we usually speak about them in real life but are all presented as being useful and necessary, except when taken to extremes. Disgust is actually taste and individuality, but can also be snobbery and prejudice. Anger can be rage and fury, but is also justice and ambition. Fear can be paranoia and cowardice, but it’s also caution and preparedness. Sadness can be despair and laziness, but it’s also empathy and appeal. And finally Joy, the one “positive” emotion. It is obviously everything good about life, but taken to extreme it is denial and selfishness. Such a strong message about the worth of all emotions, not just the “good” ones that we usually are taught we should aspire to.
I’ve always thought they could have done a gender-flipped casting for the emotions using actors from the same TV shows as the actual cast.Joy: Rob Lowe from Parks & Rec
Sadness: Paul Lieberstein from The Office
Anger: Samantha Bee from The Daily Show
Disgust: Adam Pally from The Mindy Project
Fear: Kristen Wiig from SNLThis doesn’t really mean anything, but I think it’s neat.
Solid choices.
Solid choices.
My daughter has spent some of her summer revisiting old Pixar and Disney movies while my wife and I are working. Every so often we’ll watch a little bit with her, but last week we watched a more than usual. She was watching Inside Out and she’s the same age as Riley (12 come August). Toward the end, my wife hits the emotional nail on the head by asking our daughter, “You’re the same age as her. Now that you’re a little older, does this movie make more sense to you?” She responded with a perfect mixed emotion smile.
I know Inside Out is beloved but we did not have a good time with it. We were on a Disney cruise and just wanted to enjoy ourselves. The trailer promised uproarious laughter. The movie ended with inconsolable children. Thanks, Pixar.
Loved it, particularly because it says a big ol’ fuck you to “good vibes only” bullshit.No, Joy, you’re not helping. You’re actually an asshole.
I saw Inside Out a few months after my mom passed away, and I, as a 37 year old adult, learned more about how to handle my emotions from this movie than I did from any of the grief counseling books and pamphlets that well-meaning relatives tried to share with me at the time. The visual revelations of the happy memories forever tinged with sadness is brilliant and really broke me, but in the best way.
Ah, but by your being honest, you made those who read your notice grow as people, like Riley did, if my mixed emotion is any indication, of nostalgia over the artistry of Bing Bong’s character arc, and…homicidal rage at…YOU!
This was the last movie my wife and I saw in the theater before having our first kid. It gutted me then, but now if our five year old watches it and I happen to stumble in at the ending, I suppresses incredibly deep weeping. Thinking about your kids suffering is pure anguish, but the message of the film is spectacularly profound and challenging.I consider this Pixar’s best film, and not just for that scene. Bing Bong’s demise. The hilarious realm of abstract thought. Everything Louis Black. Pete Docter is a treasure.
Pixar is good at making us cry. Now they made a movie about how they do it
This movie was depressing as hell. Not just the Bing Bong part, which is a reminder that unless you’re Abe Lincoln or a Kardashian, you will not only die, you’ll be completely forgotten soon enough. But the whole time I watched it I could only think that all these beings live inside Riley, and one day Riley will die and their whole *world* will cease to exist. Had the same thought when watching “Osmosis Jones” which was not meant to be depressing. OK, they cured Frank’s fever, but he’s still going to die one day. Will the last beings on Earth be having thoughts like that when the Sun is expanding to red giant status and boiling us alive?
The Kardashians will be forgotten within a generation or two.
Or the name will become a future malaprop for a type of sweater, used as a throw-away why-don’t-my-kids-don’t-understand-me gag.
I remember seeing this with my mother while on vacation. We both jokingly got a ton of tissues because I read some reviews saying it’ll hit hard. We ended up using the entire box by the end. She died two years later and this was one of my fondest memories. Can’t imagine watching it now without becoming the ugliest cry fest imaginable. God what a film, it also had her favorite short. That little Lava song kept her going even through the cancer and chemo.
Surprised this wasn’t the Bing Bong scene, which breaks me more than any other scene in the movie.
‘Inside Out’ hit the spot for me emotionally, but much more than that it was so satisfying on a conceptual level. The memory and core memory system, the little islands, the idea of mixed emotions that retain both colours. It all just clicked in a way that made my world-building focused brain very happy.
This movie introduced me to brocolli on pizza, which rules.
whoa, y’all are fondly reminiscing about Lava here, I thought that one was widely considered an act of war
this movie helped me – who was in her late 20s at the time – understand my grief and mental illness in a breakthrough light. my therapist told me for years that every emotion is trying to protect you by solving a problem it’s own specific way, and sometimes those specific ways are louder or more powerful. I cried so hard when I realized what they were saying. my therapist considers this essential viewing for anybody grappling with depression.
What’s cool about the premise of Inside Out is that you can apply it to pretty much any decent movie, and make it even more interesting.What were the little people doing in Mookie’s head in Do the Right Thing?What do sexual politics look like? Find out in Inside Out: Fleabag!
What would this even look like: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
We discuss this exact phenomenon in a recent episode of Cinema Therapy. Joy’s journey to accept Sadness as not just a necessary evil, but as an integral component of life is really powerful, and, as you said, maybe the gutsiest move ever in a children’s film.This clip starts when we’re talking about Sadness taking the wheel at the controller.