In other words there was a
birthday. In other words I shoved
chocolate cake at him, bought him a pair of swimming goggles and promised him a
trip to the cinema.
Inside Out, the latest offering from
the Disney Pixar stable had just been released and my boys were chomping at the
bit to go see it.
Thanks to the newly turned six year
old’s aunties that became an immediate happening when they presented him with a
cinema voucher for his birthday.
Inside Out is a rather clever vehicle
for explaining core memories and emotions to kids, including an important message
for parents towards the end. As is the ability of only the best movies, there is something for everyone in this one.
Riley Anderson is the young girl whose
head provides the headquarters for five emotions, joy, fear, anger, disgust and
sadness. These feeling guide her through
a house move and a new school.
Joy is the dominant emotion; a bright
yellow sprite bathed in an ethereal light.
Upbeat, eternally positive, always looking on the bright side of life to the
point of exhaustion and quite frankly, she's hard work. Was it just me or did anyone else want to
punch Joy in the head at times?
Fear is painted purple and a feature I
really liked about this character was he, (wonder why they gave emotions
gender. And how did they decide which one should be male or female. Hmmmm) was never too much in the
forefront. He jumped in at certain
junctions but never took over. I liked that.
Anger, as you can expect, is bright
red with regular tendancies to blow his top.
(Another male) Anger was
responsible for taking the movie and Riley in another direction altogether when
he decided to make her run away back home to Minnesota to create new core
memories.
Disgust (a lady) had bags of ‘tude and
the colour green to match. Think “eewwww”
with a sneer, jutting hip and you’ve got the picture.
We cannot forget sadness. The most, I think anyway, important emotion
in the movie. For all her blueness she
played a pivotal part in portraying the main message which is, it’s ok not to
be ok. Big, huge message.
 |
| You cannot have Joy without Sadness |
I tried not to bombard the boys with
questions on the way home about what they thought of it. I was kind of hoping they saw more than
a movie and a bucket of popcorn. Interestingly
enough, none of them wanted to punch Joy like I did, (I phrased the question
slightly differently) but they all liked sadness. And that was enough for me. They also strongly identified with
Anger. Something for me to think about
maybe.
And all of them wanted a Bing
Bong. What’s a Bing Bong? Well, you’ll just have to go along and find
out, won’t you?
Maybe take a few tissues with you as
well. If Inside Out doesn’t pull on your
heart strings, the short film about volcanoes before it will.
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