Why So Blu?

I feel like 2015 was the year of surprise hits.  You go in expecting to see some by the numbers idea that you’ve seen a million times, only to walk out with a completely different perspective.  And that is exactly what happened for me with Inside Out.  I was fully prepared for a somewhat amusing kids movie with a few adult jokes thrown in to keep people interested.  But low and behold I got an emotional gut punch from outta no where!

The story takes place primarily within the mind of a little girl named Riley as she approaches puberty.  Her inner emotions are represented by individual characters that exist in her head to sort of maintain her state of mind as she grows up.  Until recently she and her parents lived in a mid-western town where she had lots of friends and loved to play hockey.  Her father receives a job transfer to San Francisco which means that she’ll loose all of her friends and everything that she knew to be her home.  This is when things start to shift within Riley’s mind as she tries to cope with these new and drastic changes.  Up until now she’s always had a fun and care free child hood.  But now she’ll have to deal with things like loss and sadness.  Initially it seems like the character of “Sadness” will be made out to be the bad guy that they need to contain or get rid of.  But as the film shows us, in order to truly appreciate the great things in life there must also be moments of sadness from time to time.

So, here comes the BIG spoiler, and the key moment that made me, and I’m sure MANY other people weep like a babbling brook.  The characters of Joy and Sadness have been separated from the main hub of Riley’s mind.  If they don’t make it back in time, Riley might loose important parts of her personality.  During this journey they encounter Riley’s childhood imaginary friend “Bingbong”.  A pink elephant person that looks like a cross between a stuffed animal and a hobo!  There is a moment where Joy and Bingbong fall down into a pit of Riley’s forgotten memories that eventually become erased from existence.  Through the use of Riley’s imaginary “fun” powered toy wagon they attempt to propel themselves out of the pit.  They sing one of Riley’s made up songs which causes the wagon to accelerate up the steep incline.  The first try, they fall back down and crash.  The second, they fall again and the wagon almost breaks.  It’s at this point that Joy begins to loose hope and starts to give up.  Bingbong says, he has an idea and begs her to try one more time.  Christ, I’m tearing up just WRITING this, lol!  She says ok.  They hop in the wagon, start singing the song as loud and as fast as possible.  They get about half way up the cliff and Bingbong dives out of the wagon as Joy excitedly exclaims that “They’re gonna make it!”.  As soon as Bingbong jumped out I knew I was in for some serious hurt!  Joy lands on the top of the cliff and the wagon smashes into splinters but she’s safe and sound.  She looks around and realizes Bingbong isn’t with her.  She looks over the edge and see’s him waving.  If memory serves he smiles and waves back saying, “Take her to the moon for me, ok?”.

It was at this point that tears were literally streaming down my friggin face!  Grown ass man sitting in a theater balling his eyes out!  For some reason moments of self sacrifice always get to me.  Whether it’s in the final credits of “The Dark Knight” or in “Spider-man 2” when Tobey McGuire saves the train full of people, I just can’t help loosin’ it when I see people put others before them like that!

In addition to the tear jerker moments Inside Out has is also pretty friggin’ hilarious and a lot of fun.  People tend to over-use this phrase when describing kids movies, but it truly is the kind of movie that you can take anyone to see and they’ll relate to it at least on SOME level.  It’s definitely one of my favorite movies of 2015.