Here be spoilers. So just go see Inside Out.
The part of Inside Out that made me teary was at the end when Riley returns home from her aborted runaway attempt and admits to her parents her true feelings, which by then had been overtaken by Sadness, Anger, and Fear mostly. Her parents don’t yell at her or demand an apology; they offer grace, a powerful, often unexpected or seemingly undeserved force that supersedes all emotions. It’s the force Joy receives from Sadness on their journey together, and that Joy gives back to Sadness after being properly humbled.
As for the film itself: With abstract emotions literally characterized and Jungian concepts casually name-dropped throughout, the film’s overtness as one large, extended metaphor sometimes distracted me from the story. I wonder how a repeat viewing would change that. It’s probably the weirdest Pixar film to date, and we’re talking about a lineup of films that includes talking cars and a rat chef. But it’s weird in the best possible ways: imaginative, as in that Abstract Thought scene, and daring, in that it manages to build a new cinematic world in the head space of an eleven-year-old girl and toggle between it and the story developing on the outside.
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