Really good

Rating: 9/10 (11 October 2015)

I had quite high expectations on this movie as I found the trailers intriguing. I have to say it didn't disappoint. Pixar went into a lot of details to represent the evolution of a human mind.
I like the way emotions evolve during Riley's life. We start with a console with one big button and only two emotions Joy and Sadness, then all the basic emotions appear (Fear, Disgust and Anger) and the console becomes more complicated, but the memory have all one single color - because that's how children and teenager see the world the equivalent of black and white but with colors - and the emotions don't work together and all look at Joy as the leader, without really knowing what they are supposed to express, until she gets lost with Sadness, whom she despised and think of as an hindrance rather than a useful emotion. Sadness doesn't know herself what she is doing, because tendentially sadness is a passive emotion and allows others to bully her, but she is also the emotion that allows to slow down and think - after all she is the only one who reads the manuals in the control room. I have to admit I love the Sadness character and find her really funny when she gets Joy drag her around the memories maze. As I find constant Joy a bit irritating until she understands the importance of Sadness. :) It is only through the journey to go back to the control room that Joy and Sadness start to know each other and really start to cooperate as a team which will produce eventually memories of mixed colours. By the end of the film we have a team, with a bigger complicated console that allow to produce secondary emotions and mixed colors memories. I actually like also the fact that her emotions are a mix of her parents emotions.
The idea of the islands of personality connected to core memories which start to crumble when the core memories get lost, is a really good idea and I loved the abstraction factory. :) The film is not a ride of Joy, it is a mixture of emotions from the beginning when Joy dominates, through the journey of Sadness and Joy that results in rebellious and depressed Riley to finally the admission of Sadness as a fully fledged emotion and a cathartic family hug that produces the first mixed color memory.
It is a film that probably requires more than one view to get in all the details.
The only real criticism for me is that I Anger, Disgust and Fear are under developed characters and they remain a bit clichéd caricatures.