A true masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 2015)

I have seen many movies in my life, and many cartoons at that. At my age though you tend to watch a lot of cartoons that are funny and have a message yes, but seem to be missing something, that of a true real message, and that's what this movie achieves, WARNING, contains a spoiler, so read on at your own expense.
This film I would consider a true modern masterpiece, about a little girl Riley and the emotions that run her little world, and the one emotion that rules most of her world, and that being the emotion of Joy. Joy is in a way selfish, but at the same time you understand why, because everyone wants to be happy right, and that's what Joy's number one priority is, to make sure Riley grows up happy and cheery and to have memories that can make her smile, ones that define her personality, an overall happy, goofy girl with a passion for ice hockey, which in itself is a beautiful premise. Then we have the emotion you find yourself hating, and that's sadness, she's cute, but throughout she seems selfish touching all the joyous memories to make them sad, and doesn't listen to Joy when she tells her not to touch anything as she is gloomy and makes Riley, well, sad.
But I'll cut to the chase of the most beautiful thing about this movie. It is funny and cute, but it's actually also very sad I found myself at times holding back tears, and its not often I feel sad during a movie, but you begin to feel sad for Sadness as she feels unwanted and everything she does is not wanted by any of the emotions, in particular her opposite Joy, but this movies message begins to unravel when Joy and Sadness are sucked out of the control room and with just the other three emotions present we see that without Joy and Sadness that Riley begins to shut down and begins to lose who she is because they show us that with Anger in control for example that you begin to make irrational decisions and find that the people around you begin to dislike you because of your attitude, and that the idea of running away is a rash decision, and is in fact not the best solution at all.
But at the end of it all the emotions finally realise one beautiful thing, that without sadness in ones life, you cannot enjoy the simple joys in life. That in order to appreciate the things around you, the passions, people and environment that make you who you could potentially be, that you must truly experience things that are really sad so that people can help you, comfort you and that you yourself can overcome them and see the good in all the small things.
And in the end its finally realised by Joy that in order for Riley to grow, that Joy needs to give up control and have all of them take an equal role in letting Riley gain the experiences she needs to become the person who she needs to be, and that sadness is not bad at all, but there to help us overcome some of the hardest challenges in our lives, so that eventually we can eventually find and appreciate the joys in something else, and with this realisation we also see that instead of having singular emotional memories that as Riley gets older we start to see memories that are a combination of several emotions, to help us see the way we change as humans, that we learn to cope with many emotions at the same time, to help guide us and make us stronger people in life and that overall to have joy we must have sadness and vice versa.
Fantastic!