Soo much potential

Rating: 7/10 (18 November 2015)

I honestly can't believe how much wasted potential this movie has. The trailer did however give a hint to it admittedly because just watching the trailer I thought well this looks very much like a kids movie. Now don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with that, I did of course realize that this was Pixar and naturally I expected a lot more.
To a large degree though the trailer actually hyped me up immensely and from it I got the impression that Riley would be the main character and the emotions would serve as the comic relief- they would bounce of and exaggerate what she felt just growing up and to be honest thats the direction I was hoping this movie would go. That it would show her growing, show her reactions to love and depression and confusion and watch as her emotions literally and figuratively mature. Instead it turns into a fetch quest. A fetch quest with a major plot-hole that even watching the movie for the first time was obvious. I'm sure it's been mentioned but they did have an actual tube that would actually transport the memories directly to the control center! The fetch quest really took away the main feature of this film- the emotions. Firstly they separated them so we didn't get to see interactions between all the emotions throughout the time Joy and Sadness were taken out. Secondly the emotions were now the main characters and the story could then be placed in literally any context. We have to get something important and take that important thing to a place or horrible things will happen...Additionally it opened up other room for wondering do the emotions then have feelings if Joy can be sad/upset and Sadness can be happy?
To it's credit it did a decent job of getting it;s message in the chosen time period of Riley's life across quite well. It dealt quite effectively with depression and I'm sure at that if I was at that age the movie may have resonated a lot better with me and even more so if the kid watching it was dealing with those emotions. It's a good movie no doubt but in my opinion for the potential it had, making the story into a generic fetch quest really really removed the massive amount of potential this movie could've had had it not been aimed towards a certain demographic.