Riley has had a very happy childhood filled with some amazing memories, but everything is going to be put to the test when she is moved from that life to San Francisco. We are shown this massive change through her emotions, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear.
I have been waiting very patiently to see this film since first seeing the trailers for it and seeing that it had been very well received. So its a pretty interesting concept especially to put in an animated kids film, taking a closer look at emotions and how they drive us along. We are shown Riley’s life in different memories up until she is 11 and faces her first real big test when she has to move to a new place. I think that was a very good way to approach the subject as quite a lot of children will have to deal with that situation of moving somewhere new.
We live the story mainly through Joy and how she struggles to understand why everything is falling apart with Riley. She is doing everything she can to keep hold of the core memories Riley has from her childhood and keeping her personality going with its different parts. The main sections she had were family, friendships, hockey and goof ball. All of which made her up with the memories.
With the move and changes in her life, we see Sadness becoming a bigger factor in the control room. Every memory she touches changes to a sad one and there’s no changing them back. This is something Joy does not understand and along with Anger, Disgust and Fear they much try to keep Riley on track.
Joy and Sadness end up out of the control room and must try to work their way back to help save Riley from self-destruction as she begins to switch off with her lack of emotions. I really enjoyed all of this and think it is a very good way to try to help children understand the different emotions they go through and how they feel about different things. I think a film like this could really help them to see how things are different.
It really does make you think about how you feel about certain things, well it made me think anyway. And I thought the way they made it so that it is important to feel sadness at times as well. You cannot just forget that and not have any of it in your life it is not possible at all, but what it does make you aware of is that you must have a good balance of the different emotions. I also found the film to be very reassuring that things do change in life and you will build new memories and parts of your personality.
It does it all in a very nice and fun way, plenty of little laughs not only for children but for us adults too. It really does have a little bit of everything which makes it very enjoyable for people of all different ages. It certainly touches on different aspects of childhood and growing up, how you really do leave some memories behind and that you have the core memories whether they be good or bad. Let’s face it bad memories can help mold us just as much as happy memories. We learn from both the good and the bad experiences we have.
It was very refreshing to watch an animated film that had something a little bit different going on for it. So I can totally understand why this film has a lot of hype around it. It will make you feel all of those different emotions as well, so it really does manage to make you think about your own emotions and if you manage to show a balanced range. Well done Disney Pixar!
