Inside Out (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Inside Out (2015) – P. Docter

I’m a psychologist and I do have to deliver an hour lecture on emotion every year, so I came to this film, knowing that Paul Ekman and Dacher Keltner (high profile emotion researchers) were consultants on it, as a kind of homework assignment. So, yes, I was here out of a sense of duty rather than because I thought the film would be good.  I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of animation for kids (apart from Miyazaki films).  However, I found Inside Out to be a highly enjoyable, even emotional, experience.  Knowing the science behind emotion may have helped, although it is probably lightly fictionalized (or subject to poetic license) in the film.  Basically, we follow Riley, an 11-year-old girl, who is literally controlled by her emotions from a command tower inside her brain.  The basic emotions are all here:  joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust (no room for surprise, I guess).  The film sketches out their functional role by showing how Riley’s emotions guide her behaviour and also dictate others’ reactions to her.  For example, sadness helps to elicit sympathy and help from others.  The events that provide the opportunity to display and detail Riley’s emotions revolve around her family’s move from Minnesota to San Francisco; any kid that has moved knows the mixed emotions that this would entail.  Things feel pretty honest and also moving.  Pixar’s animation doesn’t let things down.  Thumbs up from me, but I wouldn’t show it to my six year old – yet.