Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person based on what their favorite movie is… That’s how it is for me. If you were to ask anyone who knows me what my favorite movie is, they can tell you right away that it is "Inside Out." Even my coworkers who I may have only spoken to a couple times, know that my favorite movie is "Inside Out." It has just become common knowledge around the workplace that this movie is very important to me. And it is. And now I am going to tell you why I love everything about this movie.
"Inside Out" is the story about 11-year-old Riley Andersen and how she and the Emotions inside her head interpret day to day life and the things that come Riley’s way. Throughout the journey of the movie, we as an audience learn a few things about life and come to discover certain things about ourselves. This movie I feel is very relatable which is why I believe it is so well liked. This is part of the reason of why I connect to it so much.
When I was 13 years old, my parents moved me to a new school, much like how Riley goes to a new school in the movie. It was hard for me because I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t know how things were run, and the school that I transferred to was much bigger than the original I had come from. My freshman year of college, I also did have a hard time making friends and adjusting to college. This part of the movie really got me revisiting the emotions from that time period in my life. As well as another part of the movie; the part in the beginning where Riley and her family move out of Riley’s childhood home to somewhere else. I can relate to that so well. Three years ago, I moved out of my childhood home, the house that I grew up in and that I learned to love so much. And then one day I had to come to terms with the fact that we were moving and would be leaving the house. Let me tell you, that was really difficult. I had to learn how to part ways with all this stuff, and I had to realize that things that I saw everyday for 18 years, were no longer gonna be part of my everyday life. It took me a while to come to terms with this and get used to the fact that I am no longer living in this house, much like how Riley really missed everything about her home. Once again, watching this play out during "Inside Out" is what helped make the movie so believable for me. But there was one major point about the movie that made me love it so much, and to this day will still leave a lasting impression on me.
My sophomore year of college I had an emotional breakdown. That semester, I had gotten depressed and didn’t go to my classes, or do homework and therefore failed everything. Another issue was that I wouldn’t come to terms with the fact I was depressed or come to terms with what was wrong. I would try to be positive and just tell myself that everything will be okay, I would block out any thoughts I had that were related to negativity. Because much like Riley’s, my life has been mostly a joyful and happy one. So there was a period of time where I thought I should not be sad, and that I should be happy. During this period of my life where I was repressing my sadness, that is what lead to my eventual breakdown. I realized that I had to let the sadness in, that I had lost control of my life and I had to realize that I could not make a positive situation out of it. This is exactly like the movie where the character Joy, Riley’s main emotion, throughout the movie, tries really hard to not get Sadness involved in anything in Riley’s life. Joy wants Riley to be happy, not sad. Joy gets so obsessed about enforcing happiness into Riley’s life, that it almost puts Riley’s entire state of mind into Jeopardy. Finally Joy realizes that in order to find happiness in your life, that you need to have a little sadness as well. Joy comes to terms with the fact that Riley should feel sad if it’s appropriate. This is the main message of "Inside Out:" that it’s okay to feel sad. No one should judge you based on how you feel about something. Because "Inside Out" shows us that it is okay to feel the things you feel and sometimes you aren’t gonna understand why you feel a certain way about something. Especially when you grow up. Growing up can be hard for anybody, especially with all the emotional changes one goes through. Much me like me in college, when I wouldn’t accept the fact that I was depressed, and repressing my emotions just made things even worse. Listening to your emotions is so important. That’s what this movie teaches us. And I love that this movie exists for little kids to watch and to get an understanding of emotions in the way that Disney and PIXAR portrays them. And it is for this reason that I relate so much to Joy, because she comes to terms with her sadness while still living through her joyous state, exactly like I did. This is why I obsess over the character Joy. Because Joy is me. This is why Inside Out is my favorite movie.
