The Town of Odyssey

Starting with Riley's birth, I love how she starts with just one emotion: Joy. The other emotions appear in turn. Whenever a situation arises that the current emotions don't know how to handle, a new emotion is made.

Which leads me to the thing that I consider to be the most intriguing aspect of the film; the development of Riley's mind. As a newborn, her mind is very simple: a single button that determines her mood depending on which emotion is pushing it. It later becomes the slightly more complex panel we see for most of the movie, and at the end, develops into the much more vast array of buttons and doo-dad's of Riley's 12-year-old mind("Look at all the curse words!") Oh, and the puberty button, appropriately labeled with warning stickers. xD

Another interesting aspect of the mind's development is how at first, Riley's mind only makes memories that are one emotion or another. Yellow for Joy, blue for Sadness, etc. But by the end, Riley has memories that are bittersweet(Joy and Sadness combined). She also has combinations of Joy and Anger, for when she is playing hockey. And at the beginning of our story, Riley only has five Islands of Personality. By the end, she has so many, it is difficult to count, which reflects reality to a T. Children's personalities are usually quite simple, but a teen or adult's personality is complex and multi-faceted.

Another interesting thing is the way in which the Islands collapsed. The first four(Goofball, Friendship, Hockey, and Honesty) all fell rather easily, but Family Island stood strong for a lot longer than the others. Parts of it collapsed, but it remained standing.

Now, I move on to our most interesting minor character: Bing-Bong, Riley's imaginary friend. His playfulness is adorable, and his love for Riley is obvious. His death in the memory abyss is so very poignant. It speaks an amazing message about growing up. His sacrifice for Joy makes perfect sense, as Joy is a very important emotion that Riley absolutely cannot lose.

So, since I'm talking about Bing-Bong, it's now time for me to review the humor of the film. I love how Pixar manages to make both kids and adults laugh, and still keep their humor clean for the whole family. Rarely do they resort to crude humor of any kind. Inside Out is no different. Some of my favorite cracks include:

*upon seeing broccoli pizza*
Anger: "Congratulations, San Francisco, you've ruined pizza!"

Joy: "Ahhh! These facts and opinions! They look so similar, I can't tell them apart!"
Bing-Bong: "Oh, it's okay, it doesn't really matter." *lumps them all together*
^Especially funny for us debaters

*Joy and Sadness get sucked away to Long-Term Memory*
Anger: "Can I say that curse word now?"

Joy: "Are you sure this is a shortcut?"
Bing-Bong: "Yeah, see? Look at the sign! D-A-N-G-E-R, shortcut!

*following trip through Abstract Thought*
Bing-Bong: "Gosh, that place is dangerous! They should put up a sign."

And, of course, who could forget:

♪TRIPLEMINT GUM!♪

The animation was, as we have come to expect from Pixar, top notch. The use of color to express each emotion and thought was superbly done.

And, moving on to the conclusion, I cannot say enough good things about how Sadness is accepted as just as important emotion as Joy. That sometimes, Sadness can lead to Joy. Sometimes, Sadness is a good thing. Sadness brings people together. I would even say this idea is Biblical, as we are called to mourn with those who mourn. Sadness can make us who we are. And it's really a beautiful message.

And that leads me to a final thought. This movie is likely the most original I have ever seen. Not just because it did the impossible and delved into the human mind, but because it did something I have rarely seen done. This movie had no villain. At first, Sadness may have appeared to be some sort of villain, but proved to be an integral part of Riley's mind. Even Anger, Fear, and Disgust were each doing what they thought was best for Riley. They may not have been right, but they had good intentions. A villainless story is something very few storytellers can pull off, and I'm very glad to see that the Pixar team is one of them.

I am in awe of the creativity displayed in this movie. Honestly, how did they even come up with these ideas? To call it clever doesn't come close to doing it justice. Every single aspect was represented in a way that not only fit within the setting, so they could actually make the movie work, but in a way that perfectly reflected the real life concept it was showing. It was truly genius, and I do not use that word lightly.

I mean seriously everything was absolutely perfect. How the emotions determined the responses to situations, those situations becoming memories, the elements of memories determined by what emotions were involved, core memories forming parts of the personality, the memories of the day stored upon going to sleep, dreams getting scripted from the memories of the day, what memories get lost and why, the 'train of thought' connecting areas of the memory banks, even why songs get stuck in the head. They thought of absolutely everything that goes on in the mind, and showed it all. And again, in ways that depicted the concepts reasonably and relatably.

And the creativity wasn't just in how they represented the things, but in how they functioned. The prime example is the main plot of the story; how initially the emotions only worked one at a time but as experiences developed the processing of memories they realized there can be aspects of more than one simultaneously present, and eventually upgraded the response mechanism to allow input from multiple emotions at once to not only live life more fully in the moment, but capture multifaceted memories for developing the personality more richly than had been possible before.

This is just a perfect depiction of what it is to be human. What goes on inside and why, and the effect it has on us as a person.

The emotions in this movie were incredible. I know for a fact this movie moved me in a real and significant way more deeply than any other I have ever seen. I know that because I don't cry easily. I get emotional, but it rarely translates to physical tears. So I have a different scale when it comes to impact movies have. If my eyes water, for me that's the equivalent of when someone would say 'That was so good, it made me cry.' If a tear actually falls, that means it was amazing. Wreck it Ralph is one of the examples of the rare outstanding movie that moved me to actual tears, it produced two.

This movie was unlike anything I have ever experienced in that area. I teared up multiple times during this movie, and not all from particularly emotional scenes, sometimes it was simply out of a deep appreciation for the beautiful depiction of humanity. I don't know if I was just really connecting with it or what, but several times I was overcome with incredible appreciation for the artistic choices in a certain element or situation. I would think 'That is remarkably clever' or 'That is the perfect way to depict that'; as I already said but it deserves repeating I was blown away by the creativity.

Then it happened. The scene where Riley's imaginary friend jumps out of the rocket. I lost it. A movie has never done this to me before, but I could not control myself, I just sat there crying for at least a full minute. I'm not ashamed to say that, I don't think it's embarrassing for guys to cry, especially if it's over something that should be really emotional like this was. And it wasn't like I was bawling, I actually made no noise at all, it was just tears uncontrollably falling. The proper response to have to that scene. Because it is deceptively, though clearly intentionally, a major emotional event. It's disguised as the cliché 'character sacrifices himself for another' scene, which okay if done well that can be emotional enough on its own, but there was so much more to it in this context. He wasn't sacrificing himself just to save Joy, so she could escape the pit, he was sacrificing himself for Riley because she needed Joy to return. And it wasn't simply a sacrifice of necessity, he willingly did it because he realized Riley didn't need him any more, it was time to let her go on without him. That is such a beautiful and powerful depiction of growing up, it masterfully culminated all the developments that were at work in Riley's mind. It's such a perfectly constructed moment in the story; major kudos to the writers.

I feel like I should keep going because this is truly one of the most significant movies ever made in my mind, but I don't know what else I can say about it. I'd just repeat myself: clever, visionary, etc. I can't put into words why this is what I think it is, you just have to see it for yourself to understand.