Spoiler alert. If you don’t want to know too much about Inside Out before you see it. Don’t read past here.
Inside Out is one of the movies currently screening during these school holidays and based on the kooky upbeat trailer and it’s PG rating, is aimed fair and square at kids. So I took four of my five to see it yesterday.
They are aged eight (twins) 11 and 12.
It’s a beautifully crafted animated film by Pixar, who have made wonderful children’s movies (Toy Story, Up, Finding Nemo ).
Inside Out is about five emotions… Fear, Anger, Joy, Disgust, and Sadness which compete for control in the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley.
The ’emotions’ performances are wonderful (Amy Poehler is an exuberant and uplifting Joy). They’re colorful and glittery and cute and hip.
It’s a poignant and wry and psychologically clever film.
And it’s sad.
I mean really sad.
Riley loses some emotions along the way which turns her into a withdrawn anxious pre-teen. She cries and pines for her past life. She snaps at her parents and friends. She steals from her mother and runs away.
She’s ELEVEN.
Conceptually I found the storyline quite challenging. Each emotion produces these ‘spheres’ and they get sucked into tubes and then stored in a long term memory room. Or something like that. I’m still a bit confused.