I liked it, of course I did. I liked how the ‘emotions’ looked like, as in a bit undefined, but artistically so, and I loved that Anger was reading on his newspaper what was happening in Riley’s life :-) . At moments it’s a bit boring, because cartoons must be for children too so they are also filled with little things for children, I could have done without all those silly things inside her head, but after all the protagonist is ten years old, so yeah, there was that too.
What matters though is the moral, for once it is indeed what matters: the thing is, when Riley was little, a child, what mattered the most was Joy, of course, with only the sporadic interference of Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger, but as Riley grows up they all become important. At first the console they use to ‘give Riley directions on what to do’ was rather small, there was space mainly for Joy alone. Riley had two loving parents, a best friend, a house in Minnesota with a lake she could go skating on, she played hockey and was generally a happy little girl. Until they had to move to San Francisco when she was ten. She tried to be positive about it, but the fact that all their stuff had ended up who knows where since the truck never arrived didn’t make it easy on any of them, and she had to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor... on her first day in the new school, when she got up to introduce herself to the class, she started crying remembering all the nice things she left behind, the place she loved so much... Joy turned to look at what had happened and saw that Sadness had touched a memory (the memory of her time in Minnesota), and Joy got really upset as if it was all her fault, upset that the beautiful memory had turned blue, sad. That experience was, for Riley, a ‘basic memory’, but unlike all the previous ones (the one that created the Family island, Friendship island, and all other islands of personality) this was a sad memory. Joy was shocked, she refused to accept a sad basic memory and tried to stop Sadness from putting it with the others, and fought with her over that, causing the big mess: Joy, Sadness and all the basic memories were all sucked out of ‘headquarters’. Sadness is the first to point out that without Joy in headquarters, Riley will never be happy again. They need to get back there.
Meanwhile, without them, Disgust Fear and Anger are the only emotions for Riley, so her answers to her parents are different, she shows attitude, and we get to see the ‘emotions’ in her parents’ heads, which was a moment I loved :lol: The father had Anger in command acting like a general giving orders to the others, while the Mother actually had Sadness in command, but with all the others very close and working very well together, I loved her head :-D
Joy thinks of trying the ‘quickest way back’ but they should walk over a line and if they fall they’ll be forgotten... so that doesn’t work and they try another way. Walking through the long-term-memory maze is dangerous, they could get lost, Sadness has read the manuals but the place is huge and they walk all night without getting any closer.
When Riley’s friend talks to her about the new girl on their team back home, Riley becomes angry and Friendship island falls down...
Along the way they meet Bing Bong, Riley’s old imaginary friend (and when he asks her what they’re doing down there, Joy implies that it’s all Sadness’ fault :-/ which is not at all, as we know).
He suggests taking the ‘train of thoughts’ and also suggests a shortcut to get to it. Sadness advices them against the dangerous shortcut but Joy doesn’t listen to her of course and they almost get vaporised (well, they become abstract then dismembered than bidimensional... but they get out in time, which I thought was quite a complex thing for a child’s movie, I liked that).
They miss the train and go through a land of imagination, meanwhile Riley tries to get in the hockey team, but gets frustrated and angry and leaves very soon, making the Hockey Island fall as well.
Bing Bong’s ‘rocket’ gets thrown down among the forgotten things and he’s feeling very down, and Joy’s attempt at making him laugh don’t work, and when Sadness talks to him Joy is all ‘don’t make him feel worse’ but she’s not, she’s actually listening to him, understanding him, which actually makes him feel better, and Joy is surprised at that. They find the train, but it stops when Riley falls asleep. Sadness suggests waking Riley up, and Riley accepts the idea only turning it into her own idea... the only way to wake Riley up is by entering her dreams of course, and Sadness suggests scaring her awake, but Joy strongly opposes the idea choosing another way because ‘she knows Riley’ and she wants to make her so happy in her dream that she’ll wake up happy... which is absurd, of course.
They actually interrupt a bad dream trying to make her laugh, until things go down and it turns again into a bad dream. They are found out and dream-production-security arrests Bing Bong. He has the basic memories so they have to free him. They finally use the gigantic scary clown to scare Riley awake. The train moves again now, but then Anger decides to take action and plants an idea into Riley’s head, to go back to Minnesota to make new happy basic memories since she was happy there, and he makes Riley steal mom’s credit card to pay for the ticket. Joy finally has a nice work for Sadness, telling her scaring Riley was a good idea.
When Riley steals the credit card, Honesty Island falls down making the train fall too. They make it out alive, and then they have the new idea of using the ... ehm... recall-tube or something: Joy gets in but when Sadness tries to go with her she touches the basic memories and Joy leaves her behind saying Riley needs to be happy and she’ll make everything sad... so Joy goes alone but the tube breaks and she falls down among the things to be forgotten, and Bing Bong falls with her.
She sees again the sad basic memory and takes it with her, and also watches again the happy memory connected to hockey that she loved so much, and discovers that before she was happy, she was actually sad that they had lost the game, she became sad so her parents and friends went to her to cheer her up, it’s thanks to Sadness if she had that happy memory...
She refuses to give up, and decides to use Bing Bong’s ‘rocket’ to get up there again, but they fail every time, until Bing Bong jumps out of the rocket-cart at the last moment, so not to weight her down, and she makes it. He’ll be forgotten, of course, but he’s the imaginary friend of a very little girl, so it’s normal, you know.
Riley goes to the bus station, refusing every call from her worried mother who didn’t find her at home. The Family Island falls too. Joy starts looking for Sadness but when she finds her Sadness runs away crying because she doesn’t want to make Riley sad like Joy always told her... but now Joy knows that Riley needs her too, and manages a way to get both of them to headquarters again (I don’t know why but I find quite disturbing the scene when Joy piles up in her magic bag a lot of imaginary-boyfriends that keep piling up one over the other after she takes away the bag... I don’t know why, but that disturbs me on a physical level :-/
Riley gets on the bus, Fear Disgust and Anger now try to stop her but the console doesn’t work anymore and they don’t know what to do and are unable to get that idea out of Riley’s head.
When Joy and Sadness are back, Joy lets Sadness take control, saying that Riley needs her, and indeed she’s able to get that idea out of her so that Riley hurries off the bus and heads back home. She’s the right one to help her now, and Joy even gives her all the five basic memories she had been carrying around, because it is right after all for Sadness to touch them: indeed when she does they turn into sad memories, but that’s what happens sometimes, that’s what happens now in Riley’s heart, because those memories remind her of home, of the friend she left there, of all the things she left behind, so thinking about all that now makes her cry while she tells her parents that she misses home. Well, they hug her and tell her that it’s normal, they miss it too, and her parents both hug her, comfort her, and then Sadness takes Joy’s hand to get her close so that Riley smiles among the tears being hugged by her loving parents, and a new basic memory, part-sad-part-joy comes out, and a new Family Island comes up.
Next thing, we see that they all have a bigger console, with space for all of them. Riley is now twelve, she plays in the local hockey team, and new friends, and is happy again.
To end the movie, we get a peek of other people’s ‘emotions-inside’: she bumps into a boy and in his head there’s a ‘girl-alarm’ sending everyone into frantic panic. During the credits we see the teacher’s head, really looking forward to the end of school, then a couple of girls, a clown, a dog, the bus driver (in his head there are five Anger-looking emotions :-p) then a cat, where there’s no one at the console until one of them leisurely walks on it moving something that makes the cat jump and run away..... :-p
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