Pixar film is a complex and funny ride!

Rating: 9/10 (25 June 2015)

Joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear: These are emotions we all experience as human beings. And once again, Pixar has chosen something that is relatively mundane, and turn them into a touching story involving colorful, adorable, and complex characters. Inside out is quintessential Pixar material: technically impressive and most importantly, human. The story is about different human emotions, personified through tangible characters, EXISTING inside a little girl's mind. Every memory that Haley experiences is stored in a ball, and the most important memories are called core memories, which are stored in a special section of Haley's brain. At first, the movie focuses on Joy's ability to bring Haley out of sad situations, such as her move away from her friends. On the other hand, Sadness always seems to bring Haley down by making her world a bit more DEPRESSING. From the get go, the audience can see a stark contrast between Joy and Sadness: As one seems to be in control and making Haley's life manageable, the other takes the back seat and occasionally chimes in to make Haley's life a little bit more depressing. After an accident, Joy and Sadness are trapped in Long term Memory, With Joy being gone, Haley's emotions become much more unpredictable. At the same time, Sadness's role becomes increasingly important as the story progresses, Sadness was able to calm Haley's Imaginary friend down and in addition, brought Haley's parents to comfort her, turning her sad memory into a joyful one. I think through the use of Joy and Sadness, Pixar wants to embrace the sadness that most of us have experienced in our lives. Many joyful moments are a result of the sadness that precedes them. For example, Haley was sad because she lost her game, her family didn't want her to be alone so they came and supported her. I think the idea of emotions as being complex, not black and white, is such an cool idea. It makes us appreciate the times that we are lonely and depressed. Being a psychology student, I also picked up a lot of psychology references in the movie. For example, balls of memories getting sucked into long term memory is not far off from the real PROCESS where daily memories are converted into long term memory during sleep. In addition, the portrayal of the subconscious as the place that stores all of our deepest fears are quite Freudian, the island of personality that is driven by core memories is similar to the psychological idea that our personalities are made up important interactions with our environments. One moment that I thought was very intriguing was when Haley lost all emotions and became numb. Her face was blank, she no longer cared about what was happening around her. To me, this moment showed that some individuals have gone through so much hardship that their emotions, which often function to as a device to warn them against danger, help them survive and fit into society, have been broken. It's almost as if their internal compasses are broken and they are unable to tell what's good and what's not good for them. Fortunately, Haley was able to regain her emotions and in the final moments, her memory balls are a mixture of emotions: Sadness and joy, anger and disgust, now interconnected, and her personality became more complex. The world of emotions is neither is black or white, but rather a mixture, diverse blend. GO PIXAR!!