I thought I hated Inside Out. But now I think I loved it.

I’m confused. I usually know how I feel about most things. Sugar? Good. Paleo? Bad. Malcolm Turnbull? Good. Eric Abetz? Bad. Immunisations? Good. Anti-vaxxers? Baaaaad. I’m not a sitting-on-the-fence kind of girl.

But the movie Inside Out has left me a bit baffled.

When I saw the previews and heard about the premise – the different emotions of a little girl being embodied in characters that live inside her head and control her feels and behaviour – I thought it sounded excellent. I couldn’t wait to take my kids.

Then I spoke to my friend who had taken her kids and didn’t have great things to say. We were talking about it over dinner last week and I thought her view was so unlike anything I’d yet heard about the movie, I asked her to write it as a post for Mamamia.

You can read that here.

I still wanted to see it though, despite needing some pretty solid powers of persuasion to get my son to come with me. He’s six and going through a weapons and violence phase that’s lasted about six years so far. “I don’t want to watch a cartoon,” he protested. “I’ve grown out of cartoons.”

"What type of movies do you like," I asked.

“Ones with violence and weapons.”

“I’ll buy you a choc top,” I offered.

Deal done.

The movie started well. Lots of laughs and action although some of the concepts were a little hard to get your head around. It’s the cleverest movie Pixar has made and probably the smartest kids movie I’ve ever seen in terms of the complexity of ideas. Like all the best kids’ movies, Inside Out has a whole other level of plot and comedy going on for adults. In fact, there is so much in there for adults and it’s so layered and clever in what it’s saying about the workings of the human mind, I feel like I need to go back and watch it again.

And that’s possibly my beef with the film. The laughs and the action come to a grinding halt in the last third and pretty much nothing happens except an intense emotional low for the main character which culminates in a climax that’s sort of a major bummer. I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Most people I know say they cried during this part. I didn’t. But I am a cold robot. In the screening I went to, all the kids in the cinema got really restless and started playing in the aisles because there wasn’t enough on the screen to distract or entertain them.

I spent much of this part of the film thinking about the ettiquette of leaving my six-year-old alone in his seat while I dashed out to get myself a salted caramel choc top. Yes, my attention drifted.

It was also pretty dark. At one point [spoiler alert] I texted my friend “BING BONG IS DEAD”.

There were some interesting but complex messages about the importance of negative emotions and I’m not sure they would have been understood by kids.

So I left the movie thinking it was a bit shit. Even though my son said he quite liked it. And then I started talking to other mothers who had gone to see it. They all cried. Their children cried. And what they said was most interesting was the conversations they had with their kids afterwards. Conversations about emotions.

We spoke about that on this week’s Mamamia Outloud podcast. Guest co-host Susan Carland loved Inside Out. She explained exactly what effect it had on her and her kids.

Listen to us on the podcast.

I’ve been thinking more about it ever since and here’s what I’ve realised. Inside Out is a smart, accessible way to open up conversations with kids about feelings - their own feelings and other people’s feelings - and even about mental illness. I’ve not spoken explicitly to my younger kids about my anxiety or the medication I take and the things I do to control it. Not because I’m trying to hide it particularly, just because little kids are very self-focussed and it’s never come up. Also because it hasn’t impacted on their lives. If I’d been hospitalised or bed-ridden or incapacitated in a way they could see, I’m sure we’d have had the conversation.

What Inside Out has done is given a way to explain mental health and mental illness. Were they to ask about what anxiety is, I could explain it was like there was a chemical in my body that made the Fear character inside my head grow enormous and seize control of my mind, elbowing the other emotions like Joy out of the way. And that there were things I needed to do to make fear go back it its normal size. If I had to explain depression - either my own or someone else’s - I could say it was like the Sadness character grew huge and took over the controls.

It’s a beautifully simple, visual way to explain feelings.

The message of the film is also a positive one ultimately - that we all have different emotions and it’s OK to acknowledge and value them all. I can’t argue with that. Nor with the absolute deliciousness of a salted caramel choc top. I recommend those even more than the film.

Which, by the way, I’ve decided I want to go and see again with my daughter (aged 9) and my son.

(And not just because I’m hanging for another choc top).

CLICK THROUGH for a gallery of Inside Out and its lovable characters.

Have you watched Inside Out yet? What's your verdict?