If you haven’t had the chance to watch this 2016 Disney movie, you absolutely have to make time to see it. It is cute, funny, and above all it’s relatable to everyone. It has amazing themes and the characters and their stories are incredible. I’m always a sucker for Disney movies but this one, as of now is my favorite. I am blown away even at the idea of this movie. How our feelings feel, or how our feelings work out problems. The characters in this story are emotions. The story basically personifies the emotions inside our head. There is Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and fear. They are all emotions inside the eleven year old Riley’s head. Now obviously there are more emotions than just five like amusement or love to name a couple. There are actually closer to twenty emotions but these five have been deemed the most relatable and important. These five emotions run her brain. They decide what her reactions to different things should be.
The first emotion were introduced to in the film is Joy. Joy is the main contributor in Riley’s brain. When something happens in Riley’s life, Joy is usually who the emotions look to for support. Joy is the first Emotion were introduced to because that’s the first emotion we all experience, as shown by Pixar. I guess as a baby seeing your mothers face for the first time would be joyous, I don’t remember. I might even think fear could be first because it’s a big new world and everything changes but that wouldn’t make for a very “Disney” story.
After we meet joy, sadness is next. Sadness is portrayed very well in my opinion. She’s lethargic, her coloring is blue, and she’s just down in the dumps. The whole story though everyone treats her like she isn’t as important as the rest. They try to keep her from touching memories. They don’t like Riley to be sad so they don’t understand sadness. Until the end that is.
The last three emotions come in when Riley is a toddler. Disgust comes in when her parents start introducing food. Particularly broccoli. Disgust is the one that decides what Riley likes. If something new comes up its her job to choose the best option. She chooses whether Riley likes broccoli, which is a definite no. She is also in charge of things like what Riley should wear on her first day of school. Fear is funny to me. When Riley comes across something new he panics. Fear is always on the look out for things that could harm her, which makes him a bit paranoid. Then there is anger. Anger is introduced as Riley’s two year old tantrums take place. Having a two year old myself this made me think and when she throws a tantrum I now see her little anger inside her head.
The emotions are centered on memories. Each reaction that an emotion creates becomes a memory in Riley’s head. If joy is the one who is running controls when something happens then the memory ball will be yellow. The other emotions colors are blue for sadness, green for disgust, purple for fear, and red for anger. For the most part Riley's memories are yellow. I’d like to think mine are too but there are certain circumstances that require a few spots of color. Like if I were to trip and fall down the stairs the memory for me would probably be purple because that is scary. Obviously there cant be a completely yellow day things happen that make us mad or scared or disgusted. I would hope that no one had a mostly blue day that would be awful. When Riley moves to a new town her memories are all kinds of color. There is a lot of purple because she is scared of the new things, what if she doesnt like them. There is also a lot of green because she is not as open to the new place as she was her old home. Joy tries to reign in the emotions and keep riley calm and happy.
There are more important memories called core memories. These are the memories that shape Riley’s personality. There is goofball island. Friendship, family, honesty, and Hockey island. These are things that are important to riley and they come into headquarters as a brighter memory and are stored in a vault and they power the personality islands.
In the story sadness, joy and the core memories get lost. They aren’t in headquarters and it becomes mayhem. The other three emotions cannot function without Joy. Riley is usually happy but when joy gets lost the other emotions take over and try to be like joy. When joy is not there riley is completely different, because Riley is controlled mostly by Joy. Disgust tries to act like joy at one point and it comes off as sarcastic. I think sometimes my Joy takes a nap and disgust takes over because I can be quite sassy at times.
A few times in the movie you see Riley’s mom and dads emotions. They are different, there are still the same five emotions but the control center is different. The mom is mostly controlled by sadness, whereas the dad is mostly controlled by anger he is the main person in the dads head. Not to say the other emotions are not there. but you see them come across a problem and the other emotions turn to sadness and anger in the parents. I guess as an eleven year old girl you should be mostly run by Joy. No one should have to be run by anger or sadness but it does happen and that’s not always bad.
While Joy, sadness and the core memories are lost, Riley’s personality islands start to fail. The core memories aren’t there to run them so they just stop working and Riley shuts down emotionally. She no longer loves hockey because she cant remember what made her love it in the first place. She doesn’t play around with her parents anymore because the goofball memory isn’t there to run its island.
As Joy and sadness are on their journey back to headquarters you find that sadness is absolutely needed as an emotion. Yes we all like to hide it or push it aside and just be happy, but after seeing this I realize that doesn’t work. Sometimes we need sadness to get to joy. When you are sad and people notice they come to cheer you up. Sadness can heal you. You have to sometimes feel sad to get through to your next Joy. Joy and sadness finally return and Joy decides to let sadness be in charge for a while. Riley needed to get her sadness out there. She needed to cry. She needed sadness and joy to work together.
I am not sure who runs my emotions. I'd like to think it is joy. At this point in my life it could actually be anger or fear. I also don’t know what my personality islands are or core memories. I think about it a lot after seeing Inside Out actually. I think about why I’m letting anger take over sometimes. I constantly think about why people act the way they do now. This was an impressive visual representation of human emotion in my opinion and one of the greatest Disney movies so far.
