Inside Out

My favourite film I saw this summer was Pixar's 'Inside Out'. Although it was marketed as a children's film it was in fact very clever. I have thought of several interesting series about this movie. The movie shows the five main emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. The character of Joy seems to be in control of Riley's mind but when both Joy and Sadness go missing Riley is left with only Fear, Anger and Disgust to run her. This brings her into conflict with her parents a lot since they moved to a new state. I believe that losing Joy and Sadness was a metaphor for depression as depression is not always just being sad. A lot of the time it is repressing the two extremes and lashing out with anger. Obviously sadness is also a key feature, hence why I'm assuming the Pixar animators made sure Sadness touches Riley's 'core memories' to make them sad; yet another link to depression. Another theory about Riley is that she might be transgender. This is because she is in fact the only character to have both male and female emotions whilst everyone elses emotions are the same as the gender identity.

The emotion running the mother's mind is Sadness whislt the father's is anger. This could also link to mental health issues. The father seems, throughout the film, calm and collected even though Anger is the one controlling his mind. This could suggest bipolar disorder or something as simple as anger issues.

I feel like using the characters in 'Inside Out' in counselling sessions would work incredibly well because then the person could arrange their 'mind' to show what emotion they think controls them. Some people are too shy or simply do not know how to put their feelings in words so being able to simply point out what they're feeling would make the process a lot easier I believe.

I think it is important to show kids and teach them about mental illnesses to avoid prejudices later in life. I enjoyed this movie a lot as it had a clever plotline, beautiful animation and a fair few relatable scenes. Pair that up with a good cast and some funny jokes and you've got yourself a good old-fashioned family friendly movie. You're never too old for Pixar movies! The clever colour scheme also helps children identify which character is which and motion. Red is for anger presumably because of the colour a person's face would usually turn when I angry, yellow is for joy because it is a bright colour to match the sun, green is for disgust which also links to envy, blue is for sadness because for some reason the colour blue has always to my knowledge been a colour connotation of sadness, and finally purple is for fear because maybe when you clench your fists in fear your fingertips turn a bluey purple.

In conclusion, I would definitely recommend this film no matter of your age. It was very interesting and well thought out.