When the weather is grim during the summer holidays, parents flock to the cinema. So yesterday I went along to see the latest film from Disney Pixar – Inside Out. In essence, it is about the main emotions – joy, sadness, disgust, fear and anger – living inside the brain of young girl Riley as she moves with her parents to a new life in San Francisco.
It starts with a rather lovely song and story about a volcano called "Lava" - bit confused about the link with the main film here.
The film is clever. It’s based on real psychology (how memories are made, what happens when we sleep, the link between memories and personality, the sub-conscious etc). And it explains how we humans are at the mercy of our emotions during day-to-day life. It’s a really fun way for kids to learn how to recognise and manage their own and others’ emotions.
The animations are lovely. The internal plot (two main emotions get lost inside other brain functions) links nicely to the external plot (Riley is unhappy at her new school). The train of consciousness, imagination land and imaginary friends all play an important part in the story.
And I can't wait for the follow up film when they press that "puberty" button!
Older parents will remember reading The Numskulls in kids’ comics The Beano and The Dandy when we they young – it reminded me of that. With very fond memories.
Even though I was at the late show there were some small people in the audience. And even Master Cough and Kick behind us managed to keep quiet and enjoy the action. There are 2D and 3D versions of the film.
And the trailers for future kids' films looked good too – There’s Kung Fu Panda 3, The Peanuts Movie (Snoopy and Charlie Brown), The Good Dinosaur, Hotel Transylvania 2 and another all-action Peter Pan movie called simply Pan.
