Inside Out is the Best Pixar Movie Ever Made

Trying to decide the best Pixar movie is like trying to decide the best dessert at a critically acclaimed five star dessert bar.  We all have favorites, but certain ones resonate with us more than others and it may be different from person to person. Once thing can be sure thought, Pixar makes great movies that oftentimes illuminate things about life and the human condition.

When I saw Ratatouille I was convinced that no other Pixar experience would surpass it for me. The story of Remy and his plight to be a chef was an incredible underdog story, that taught us to follow our dreams and put all our effort in no matter the odds against you. To my incredible and joyous surprise though, I recently saw a movie that rivaled the Ratatouille experience for me and maybe even surpassed it. That movie was Inside Out.

I had been looking forward to seeing Inside Out for a while, but I didn't expect the emotional heartfelt journey that awaited me. Pixar has always been infamous for building incredible movies that make us think, beyond being enjoyable. Every movie they make has a theme or a message behind it, but never before has an animated movie been so much about looking inside ourselves as Inside Out. Even just the name denotes that very thing.

Inside out focuses on a young girl named Riley. A girl who, love hockey, does well in school, has a great family life, and has a happy young childhood all around. Underneath things though, the characters we get to know are Riley's own human emotions. That of; joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. These emotions are characterized as their own beings, entirely focused on that single emotion and instilling that emotion in Riley through a console in Headquarters (or Riley's mind.)

We see Riley grow up and have a wealth of happy memories being developed by the emotions, but when she turns 12 the whole world gets turned upside down when the family moves to a tiny house in San Fransisco. This sees the emotions of the young girl run wild as her life gets much more complicated. Through the lens of humanized emotions given character, we see the mind of a twelve-year-old girl go through  emotions trying to make sense of the change in her life. Inside Out shows us how conflicted and emotionally unstable a developing teenager can be when massive change happens.

Through this brilliant storytelling mechanism, the master storytellers at Pixar walk us through the story of a young girl coping. Inside Out as most Pixar movies is a ton of fun, but on top of that it has a wonderful message to impart to it's audiences. We see the characters travel through multiple parts of the human psyche, including imagination and the subconscious, as well as memory banks. Of course Pixar finds fun ways to play on each of these things, making it funny and heartfelt throughout. My personal favorite scene of the movie includes two characters hilariously trying to scare Riley awake through her dreams.

At various points we see the emotions of other human characters throughout the movie reacting to things that Riley does or things in the world. No doubt, some of the impact and message is lost on me with Inside Out as I believe anyone who is a parent will especially find meaning in the movie.

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Partway through the movie we see Riley lose the ability of her joy and sadness emotions. Because of this she reacts to things in very different ways. Lacking those emotions it's basically like those have been turned off. Through trauma in our lives, especially when we're younger it may be difficult for us to feel certain emotions. For anyone who's life has undergone a sudden change like myself, I believe we can identify with this. While the movie finds a fun storytelling way to do this, it's something that resonated very much with me. Sudden change like that at such a young age is incredibly scary and numbing, and although I never moved away from what I was used to I did find ways to identify with the movies story.

Growing up I lived a fairly sheltered life, as my parents went through a horrible divorce and custody battle through much of my adolescence I found myself very much without friends throughout middle school and high school. I spent my time with entertainment, as my mother was unwilling to let me go anywhere without being watched, or just spend time with friends by myself. This feeling of loneliness permeates your life, causing you to feel those emotions like fear, and anger and sadness more than anything else. Then at a certain point you lose the sadness too, and once joy and sadness leave you have only the emotions left that can cause you to do drastic things. Being driven by fear and anger causes you to think irrationally, and when you're a developing mind you may not know how to handle those emotions correctly something Inside Out shows perfectly.

The real beauty of Inside Out lies in just that, it shows something that many of us have gone through in our lives. The confusion of growing up and not knowing how to cope, or the confusion of dealing with a child going through that and not knowing how to help them. Pixar has impressed me on many many occasions in my life so far, but never have they created something so emotionally impactful and resonant for me. This is what our entertainment should be, incredibly insightful and meaningful pieces that cause us to think or feel something. Or something we can share with others, that will bring us closer. Which is also what I think Inside Out is, a piece that everyone can connect to and a movie that parents and children and families all need to see.

Indeed, Inside Out shows us the importance of taking time to be with not only the people we love but the things we love to do. In Riley's mind the things that are important to her form into islands. There's hockey island, friendship island, and family island among other things. These are the focal points of her life and what forms the basis for her as a person. We have to embrace the things we love.

Without droning on too much, I'd rather have you see the movie yourself. Let me just say that Inside Out is a masterpiece of animation and storytelling, everything about it is impeccable right down to the execution. It's an incredible piece of cinema that teaches us about the very most inner working of ourselves as humans. It's a piece that everyone young or old can connect to, and a movie you owe it to yourself to see. There's no doubt in my mind at this point that Inside Out is the best movie Pixar has ever made, and if you haven't seen it yet I hope that you choose to do so now. Inside Out is what we should strive to do with our entertainment, and I'm happy that I had the chance to enjoy it.