Recently, I had the pleasure of watching Disney Pixar's "Inside Out" for the very first time. Being the 20-something-year-old that I am, my heart will forever belong to the classic Disney cartoons like "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast and others. Because to me, and my generation, growing up with these makes them the classics, the originals, the best. Don't get me wrong -- I love "Tangled," and even more so, "How to Train Your Dragon" and -- hello -- Finding Nemo." I can't say "Dory" quite yet. stay tuned for a review.
The classics seemed to always mean more or stand for something greater; the overarching themes felt more meaningful. Perhaps that's just me being biased having grown up with them.
Anyway, "Inside Out" was great. It was hilarious (Sadness for the win), creative, and downright ingenious. However it still doesn't quite cut it in my all time favorites list, but it's one of the few Disney Pixar movies to come pretty close. Here's why.
Sadness. Ahem! Spoiler alerts ahead if for some weird reason you haven't seen this yet.
Like I was saying, Sadness. In this movie, Sadness saved the day. There came a point when the feelings in Headquarters (the area of the brain these feeling characters worked and resided) had messed up so badly that Riley, their human body vessel, could no longer feel anything.
Most people associate Joy (happiness) as the most important, dominant emotion, the primary, and sadness is the one that ruins it and everything else.
But really, to feel and know sadness is to feel and know happiness. How can you know and appreciate one without the other?
What makes us human is our ability to feel, not just happiness. That's not natural. That's not human. Or even living, because hello? Animals are just as capable of feeling these as we are.
But to really feel -- to experience this deep, powerful human emotion that we call sadness -- should never be put down or overlooked.
Sadness is actually beautiful. It's raw, powerful and moving. It's at the core of our humanity. There's a reason why most music hits throughout history are about broken hearts, loss, and pain. Because it's these emotions that draw out our most raw, human selves.
Too much of anything is lethal -- the poison is in the dose, after all. To be consumed by sadness, as "Inside Out" shows, is destructive and self-diminishing. Yet too much happiness just makes you a robot. So to see Sadness be the emotion that got Riley feeling alive again struck me as ingenious for a kid's movie, because I think it's important to teach children at younger age it's OK to feel the feelings you feel, whatever they all may be -- which includes sadness. To not suppress it. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, as I do a lot of things but, hey, that's what makes me, me. Human.
I guess, after all this I'm trying to say that I think "Inside Out" really hit the nail with its message and entertainment. Obviously, it has stuck with me after all this time, and I'm happy to see a newer kid's movie be able to apply a real world lesson applicable to kids and adults again.
