Inside Out

"A Major Emotion Picture"

- Tagline of the film



Inside Out is the 15th Animated film by Pixar, released in 2015. It was directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen.

The plot revolves around five personified emotions, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), who all work together to guide a young girl named Riley Andersen (Kaitlyn Dias). Well, "together" is more of a exaggeration here: in truth, Joy has been hogging out responsibilities as Riley's main emotion since Riley's birth. With time Joy has learn what usefulness Fear, Disgust, and Anger have, but she cannot get on her mind what Sadness role actually is, so she push Sadness away whenever possible.

At the age of 11, Riley and her parents move from Minnesota to San Francisco for her father's new business. Riley's first experiences with the city are not particularly positive ones, but Joy is extremely determined to keep Riley happy for all means possible, and this means isolating the girl from her other emotions, specially Sadness as the latter has gotten in a compulsion of touching all the girl memories and turning them sad. So, when Riley's form a new Core Memory tinted by Sadness, Joy cannot have it and try to dispose of it, but in her panicked struggle to do so both Joy and Sadness get expelled from the Control Center and end lost in the storage area of long-term memory, leaving Anger, Fear, and Disgust to maintain Riley happy and functioning.


 * An Aesop: Several, in fact:
 * Don't bottle you emotions.
 * Isn't bad to feel sad from time on time. It actually helps to connect with others.
 * There are no such thing as "Bad emotions". Even emotion with negative connotations have a reason to be, even if at the time doesn't seem so.
 * Telling people who seems upset to smile or actually attempting to make them smile is not the best approach and can even be counterproductive. Sometimes, just listening to them can do wonders
 * One for the parents: if your children seems upset for some reason, is a good idea to tell them that you are available to listen to their worries and actually listen to them when expressing their emotions.
 * All Psychology Is Freudian: downplayed. While the "trauma" theory isn't used, Freud's ideas of the organization of the mind are.
 * Amazing Technicolor Population: The emotions
 * Anthropomorphic Personification: Again, the emotions
 * Bumbling Dad: In the dinner scene, Riley's father ends up exacerbating the situation because he wasn't paying attention and misread his wife's cues on what was bothering her. On the rest of the film he seems a genuinely good father, with this as his only slip.
 * Character Development: deconstructed with the emotions, with due to their nature can't fundamentally change or develop. So their actual journey in the plot is they changing their relationships with each other, namely.
 * Chekhov's Skill: Joy insistence on have Sadness read the manuals to keep her away actually pays off when they are both trapped in the maze-like long term memory area and Sadness is ther only one capable to navigate the area.
 * Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Literally: yellow is yellow, blue is blue, red is red, green is green and purple is purple. This turns out to be consistent with all the set of emotions we see in other characters, and with the memory orbs we see in the film.