Stream Inside Out On Disney+ Before Watching The Sequel

Writer and director Pete Doctor conceived of the idea for Inside Out as a sort of stream-of-consciousness process when he witnessed his teenage daughter going through the myriad emotional roller coasters so typically of kids going through puberty.

His idea was then approved at Pixar, and the filmmaking team took five years to bring the story together, consulting with neuroscientists and child psychologists to ensure they depicted the mind correctly. 

Inside Out centers around the non-stop stream of emotions one middle school aged girl, Riley, undergoes in her life right as her parents are moving their family to a new location. Riley does not want to move from the only home she’s ever known in Minnesota to a big, sprawling, urban city, San Francisco.

To make matters worse, their new home in San Francisco feels old and run down, and all of their belongings get rerouted to Texas, leaving the family to eat pizza on the floor. Then, Riley’s father is gone a lot, focusing on his new job. 

But the truth is that this aspect of Inside Out is merely the setting for the real stream of activity that takes place in the mind of this 11 year old girl. This delightful animated film mostly presents viewers with the primary emotions all humans must deal with: joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger.

In the movie, Joy is the leader, voiced by Amy Poehler, and she is determined to keep Riley happy, discounting Sadness, voiced by Phyllis Smith, out of concern that Riley will become unnecessarily burdened by sadness. 

For younger viewers, the story is fairly simple — we see Joy struggle to keep Sadness in her place, while Anger, Fear, and Disgust take smaller roles in the backseat of Riley’s mind. Inside Out is, at face value, a stream of emotions at play inside a kid’s mind.

Unfortunately, in this struggle, Sadness accidentally turns some of Riley’s core memories, which were originally joyful, sad, and even creates a new sad core memory of Riley’s first day at her new school. 

Joy, of course, tries to stop this memory from becoming deeply embedded in Riley’s mind, and the two emotions end up traveling to Headquarters together, leaving Anger, Disgust, and Fear in charge of Riley’s emotional output, to disastrous results.

“Personality islands” begin to crumble, Joy and Sadness must figure out how to fix what they’ve broken, and Joy must contend with the fact that sadness has a place in every person’s life. 

Of course, Inside Out delivers the appropriate happily-ever-after amid this endless stream of emotions, but it is the meta story taking place at a higher level that I loved so much about this movie. It is rare that an animated film is able to deliver this type of dual narrative, and Disney does it with this one exceptionally well.

As a parent, it is an awakening moment to realize that your children must experience the full range of their emotions. We have to allow our kids to be sad, to grieve what they’ve lost, and even to be angry and afraid. We often put so much pressure on our kids to be happy, that we forget how critical the other emotions are to a fully formed life experience. 

GFR SCORE

I am looking forward to Inside Out 2, as, apparently, Riley enters her teen years and new emotions are introduced, much to the chagrin of the primary players. I give Inside Out 5 stars out of 5 and highly recommend you stream it on Disney+ before heading to the theater this weekend. A refresher is surely in order.