"Inside Out" Movie Review

How many ways was this movie made for me?  Amy Poehler, check.  Pixar, check.  Movie about an 11 year-old girl who moves far away from her friends, check.  Made. For. Me.

Dad's emotions, with Anger front and center.  His brain
looks like the panel from a sports show.

See, I moved from my home at 11, also.  It's a tough time in a girl's life to begin with.  Add to that the puberty button, and it becomes something of a mess.  Goofball Island, Friendship Island, even Family Island crumble.  Oh, how I related to this movie.  Riley cried in front of her new classmates; I spoke with a Rhode Island accent.  The entire class was mocking me when I said that a noun was a "person, place, thing, or idear".  "Idear!  Idear!"; I can still hear their voices.  Did anyone else notice that Riley, the daughter, has Joy running the controls, while Mom has Sadness, and Dad has Anger in charge?  How true, how true.

Oh, Bing Bong, it's so sad to say goodbye.

Watching this as a mother of an 8 year-old girl put me over the edge of reason, man.  Spoiler alert, when Bing Bong martyred himself as a forgotten memory, that was my first cry of the movie.  Tootie Pie has pretty much abandoned her belief in Santa Claus; the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy can't be far behind.  The second tear-jerker moment was when Joy relinquished control to Sadness, because what Riley really needed was to express her sadness.  That's something I'm still learning.

Up until now, my favorite Pixar movie was "Finding Nemo".  The irrepressibly upbeat Dory was my hero.  She always found the bright side of things, but maybe that's because she had short term memory.  Maybe that's the key to happiness.  Riley and I don't suffer, or enjoy, the same affliction, and so sadness affects us, because we remember.  Ernest Hemingway said, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know"; I swore I'd be different.  I could be smart and joyous, but, alas, it's an unattainable goal.  I'm a mother, and Sadness is at the helm of the ship.  There is no other alternative.  But...Joy is her right hand woman, and I feel like the two of them can come to some sort of arrangement where Sadness doesn't interfere too much with the warm, happy, core memories.

The boss of Mom's brain?  Sadness.  Oh, dear.