Watching ‘Inside Out’ Nine Years Later

Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)

“Seriously, you haven’t seen Inside Out yet?!”

A friend of mine totally judged me a few weeks ago when we were discussing animated movies, and I revealed that I hadn’t seen “Inside Out,” which came out in 2015. That year, a lot was going on in my life, including moving to a new city for a new job, house-hunting, and navigating many other new things. Watching movies was at the bottom of my list; I probably didn’t see more than ten movies that year, a number I surpass in a month now.

Now that it’s 2024 and Pixar’s “Inside Out” has gotten a sequel, I decided it was high time I saw the critically acclaimed movie. The story follows 11-year-old Riley, who moves to a new city with her parents. Her emotions—Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness—are very conflicted over the overwhelming change, leading to a big existential crisis for the little girl. Can Riley’s emotions work together to help her navigate the challenges of a new city, school, and making new friends?

I convinced my parents to watch it with me, and while Dad declared it boring after the first 20 minutes, Mom didn’t have to say anything—she simply dozed off after 40 minutes. So okay, it’s definitely not as amusing for folks past the 50 mark. As for me, I always thought that the concept of showing human emotions as little people inside our heads was really cool and fun. “Inside Out” was definitely interesting, even though I didn’t think it was as entertaining as everybody else made it out to be. But it could also be because plenty of fun animated movies have come out since, including Pixar’s “Elemental,” which borrows the basic concepts of “Inside Out” to show elements in human-like forms. If I had to name five animated movies that came after 2015 and I enjoyed more than “Inside Out,” they’d be:

Sing (2016) – I’ve seen this thrice, but that’s also because I love pop music.Nimona (2023) Luca (2021)Encanto (2021)Raya & The Last Dragon (Unpopular opinion maybe, but I really enjoyed it)

The primary protagonist of “Inside Out” is Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Riley’s dominant emotion, who is illustrated as a luminescent young woman with shocking blue hair and a green dress, which somehow to me looked like a homeless Tinker Bell. All the other emotions looked a lot more engaging than Joy, especially the wide-eyed, gloomy blue Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith) and the feisty, outspoken Anger (voiced by Lewis Black). All these emotions live in Riley’s head and take turns helping her make important life decisions. They also take care of her memories, but it is mostly Joy who leads through the day.

The focus on a little girl’s big emotions is done really well, especially in demonstrating how kids are psychologically impacted by their parents’ decisions. Riley is scared of all the new changes in her life, sad about leaving her friends behind, and worried she will not be able to keep up a happy front in front of her parents. Things only feel worse because her parents are too caught up with the changes too and don’t give Riley the same attention, making her feel more alienated, to the point of wanting to run away from home and go back to her old life. However, I wish the makers had shown a little bit more of Riley as a person, instead of focusing most of the runtime on Joy and Sadness getting lost and trying to find their way back. They waste a lot of time with Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong, a silly character who tries to lead them through a shortcut but gets them in trouble. I really kept hoping to see more interactions between Riley and her parents because they seem to have such a cute, happy dynamic, but their scenes are far too few.

“Inside Out” packs its best moments towards the end, where the moral of the story is beautifully executed in an emotional climax featuring Riley, who finally opens up to her parents about what’s going on in her head. The moral? It’s okay to be sad, but not okay to bottle up our sadness. Love the message. I couldn’t help but sniffle up just a little in the end. Overall, this is still a nice, cute film to watch on the weekend and some viewers might obviously love it a lot more than I did.

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