Inside Out: Spoilers, Review and Giveaway

This post contains spoilers (including still images) from Pixar’s movie, Inside Out. No compensation was provided for this review. The giveaway is in no way sponsored nor endorsed by Disney or Pixar.

I saw the previews… I thought that this movie looked so adorable and I was excited to go see it in the theater. I knew I’d probably cry at some point, but I wasn’t prepared to cry for the 1 hour and 42 minutes this movie runs. Inside Out is easily the best film Pixar has produced since Finding Nemo and it really, honestly touched me in a dozen ways on a very personal level.

In short, Inside Out is about the internal workings of a little girl named Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) who we see at age 11 for the majority of the movie. The premise is that there are 5 emotions working together to make us who we are: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Louis Black), and Fear (Bill Hader). Together, this adorable team of emotions help guide Riley’s life choices and work to create for her the happiest of long and short-term memories. But emotions and life aren’t that simple and we see Riley deal with the complexities of emotion and how they can affect our life choices.

 

The Long of It

(Major spoilers ahead)

The major movie plot revolves around Riley’s parents uprooting their happy life in Minnesota where Riley has friends, is member of a hockey team and has spent her entire life, in exchange for a new life in San Francisco, California. As her team of emotions struggle with the change internally, we see Joy try desperately to keep everyone in line and remind them all that they need to keep Riley happy so that she can continue making good memories. While trying to keep Disgust from being, well… disgusted, Anger from going off the rails and Fear from causing his drama, Sadness creeps her way in and touches some of Riley’s current memories, turning them blue.

(You guys… I am CRYING just talking about this movie)

This causes confusion and overall panic among her other emotions. They don’t understand what has happened or how it could happen. They have always made sure Riley was happy and are unsure of how to deal with the conflicting emotion. Joy’s initial tactic is to try to keep Sadness away, trying to force her to stay away from the console that controls the emotions and actions. At one point, Joy even draws a small circle on the ground and tells Sadness that this small place in the back is where she needs to stay.

But Sadness doesn’t listen and while her fellow emotions continue to try to figure out how to handle Riley’s situation, Sadness touches the console more and creates a new core memory and it isn’t happy and glowing yellow like the ones made by Joy. The 5 core memories make Riley who she is. These 5 memories are represented as islands that until now have continued to thrive and look almost like little theme parks in her mind: Family Island, Friendship Island, Hockey Island, Goofball Island, and Honesty Island.

Desperate to remove the sad memory, Joy tries to pull it out so that it can be disposed of. But Sadness knocks out all of the core memories out of place and Joy swoops in to try to put them back where they belong. But before she can, both she and Sadness are carried away by a vacuum tube that leads to the mine world where Riley’s long-term memories are collected. Disgust, Fear and Anger are left to take care of Riley and while they want to fill the shoes of Joy and keep Riley happy, they simply can’t and their personalities take effect.

While Joy and Sadness are venturing around Long-Term memory and trying to find a way back to Emotion Headquarters to fix the damage that has been done already, Riley’s emotions begin to fight with one another and react to different problems she is facing. She begins to talk back to her parents and fight with them, causing Family Island to shake and break down. Her other 5 islands break down as well. Her best friend back home gets a new best friend and hockey team mate. The anger and fear she is experiencing for the first time destroys Goofball Island completely and it falls into The Abyss – a dark place where memories go that are completely forgotten and thought to be unable to be retrieved.

While trying to find their way back, Joy and Sadness encounter Riley’s imaginary friend named Bing-Bong (voiced by Richard Kind) from her early childhood who is wandering around the maze that is her long-term memory. He’s trying to be cheerful but has been out of a job since Riley was 4 years old. He’s desperate to find purpose again and has been looking for a way to be apart of Riley’s life in fear that he will cease to exist. Sadness comforts him, and Joy finds confusion in the comfort… because how is Sadness going to help him any?

(Losing it right now)

Joy, Sadness and Bing-Bong come up with a plan to try to ride on the “Train of Thought” which has direct access to Emotion Headquarters. They begin to trek through various parts of Riley’s mind such as Imagination Land and Dream Production. As they come close to their destination, Anger, Disgust and Fear find reason in the idea that Riley must need to be in Minnesota to be happy. The only logical choice to them is to tell her to return there and to run away from her family.

Honesty Island crumbles and falls away when her remaining emotions tell Riley to steal from her parents and pack a bag so that she can run away. The Train of Thought is destroyed and Joy, Sadness and Bing-Bong try to take refuge on the remaining Family Island. But as Riley steps onto a bus so that she can run away from home, the last of the islands crumbles and falls into The Abyss taking Joy and Bing-Bong with it while Sadness narrowly escapes.

It seems as if all hope is lost and that Joy & Bing-Bong will be forgotten and cease to exist. But Joy notices something about the memories that Sadness has caused, realizing that when Riley was sad, it signaled others that she needed help. She finally understands Sadness’s role in Riley’s personality and that by preventing her, she is preventing Riley from feeling true Joy.

Hope comes for Joy and Bing-Bong when they find his special rocket that he and Riley played with when she was younger. They use it to try to fly out of The Abyss. In a moment of self-realization, Bing-Bong understands that if he loves Riley, it will mean sacrificing himself so that Joy can make the flight out. He starts the rocket and jumps off after it’s in flight, falling back into The Abyss and allowing Joy to escape. Joy looks back, realizing Bing-Bong’s act of selflessness, and Bing-Bong thanks Joy for letting him be important one last time as he vanishes, forgotten.

Joy finds Sadness and wants to reconcile, but Sadness flies away on a storm cloud of tears because she believes herself to be useless and that Riley is better off without her. With some tools from Riley’s imagination, Joy launches herself towards Sadness and sends them flying towards Emotion Headquarters where Disgust and Anger work together to help them return.

With Riley under the command of all of her emotions again, she returns home and discovers her worrying parents. Although the emotions beg Joy to fix the problems, Joy leads Sadness to the controls, understanding now what her role is. Riley begins to cry and her parents comfort her which creates a new, more complex emotion and core memory which rebuilds a new and better Family Island.

Her emotions begin working together to make more of these complex memories – mixtures of disgust and anger, happiness and fear, etc. We see Riley’s core values grow and many more Islands appear. She’s recovering and Sadness is treated as an equal and necessary pat of her team of emotions.

(Seriously. All the crying.)

 

Best Movie of the Summer

At a time when most of the so-called Blockbusters can leave us with such a bad taste in our mouth, this movie is so very much welcomed. I couldn’t stop crying. I was miserable and sniffling and a complete emotional wreck – even once I’d collected myself and made myself leave the theater.

Pixar has always been really good at tugging on the heart strings, but they tackled something so beautiful… they tugged at our hearts and our minds at the same time. They took the delicate subjects of emotion and mental health and orchestrated something beautiful, positive and easy to comprehend.

The moment when Joy understands that Sadness is needed and what her role is, broke me down. I was crying. No, I was sobbing to the point that I was struggling to cry silently and kept letting out little squeaks as I was desperate to mute the emotional breakdown I was publicly having.

Easily my favorite Pixar film to date. I highly recommend going to see it… without makeup on of course.

 

A Special Giveaway

I’m pleased to say that you can enter to win your very own Bing-Bong. Keep him and cherish him so that he is never lost. The beautiful idea that is the childhood imaginary friend is so precious and worth saving. I love that Funko Pop decided to make a clear version of this figurine (which is the one I am giving away). It prompts the idea to me that although you can’t always see it very well, the innocence of your childhood isn’t really gone and forgotten.

This giveaway is open to U.S. readers only. I’m sorry International Readers – I still love you.

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