Inside Out Movie Review: A Christian Perspective

By guest blogger, Todd Young

The highly entertaining and hilarious movie, Inside Out, depicts the emotions that we all have as individual personas that fight for control of our minds and actions. In the storyline, these emotions take turns controlling the actions of the main character, Riley. In this article, I’ll discuss the defining moments and the central theme of the movie and then give my Christian perspective on how you can control (as the movie’s byline calls them) the “little voices inside your head”.

In the movie, the main character is Riley is a happy-go-lucky hockey-loving 11-year-old Midwestern girl, but her world turns upside-down when she and her parents move to San Francisco. Riley's emotions -- led by Joy (brilliantly played by Amy Poehler) -- try to guide her through this difficult, life-changing event. However, the stress of moving all the way across the country brings Sadness to the forefront. When Joy and Sadness are inadvertently swept into the far reaches of Riley's mind, the only emotions left in the headquarters of Riley’s mind are Anger, Fear, and Disgust.

It’s a pretty wild ride as we watch Riley’s “personality islands” crumble when she stops finding fulfillment in friendship, hockey, being a goofball and her family. Occasionally, we see the “train of thought” roll through Riley’s brain, on a somewhat random schedule, and with no apparent destination or purpose. At one point, the emotions Joy and Sadness hitch a ride on the train. During the entire movie, Riley’s emotions are literally at the control panel of her mind, controlling her actions and especially her reactions to those around her.

Defining moments

One of the defining scenes for me was when Riley was on a Greyhound bus leaving her family (spoiler alert, Riley decides to run away). We see Riley sitting in the seat of the bus with a sort of catatonic look on her face. When her circumstances take a turn for the worse, she allows herself to be driven by Anger and Fear, on a path towards being a runaway. Seemingly unable to turn back to her parents and her home.

Meanwhile, the characters Joy and Sadness are trying to complete their odyssey in her mind and get back to headquarters. The moment they find their way back to the control panel and Sadness starts to take over her thoughts, we see Riley’s face change from a dumb stare to some kind of realization. She awakens from her stupor, gets off the bus and finds her way back to her parents. I have to admit, the ensuing reunion with her parents, which was a very redeeming, touching and loving scene jerked a few tears from my eyes. The scene was very reinforcing to the positive role of parents and the benefits of having and/or being a loving, understanding parent. How necessary that is for kids who are going through life’s changes and challenges.

The movie ends with a lot of very entertaining scenes where we see what’s going on in the minds of all sorts of random characters, including cats and dogs. After shedding a few tears, it was nice to have a good laugh!

Thoughts about the central themes of the movie

Certainly one of the central themes of this movie was about the role emotions play in our lives, which are illustrated by the characters Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. And, at the core of the movie’s value system, happiness reigns supreme. Although each emotion had its unique role and function in Riley’s life, they were all united on the central goal of striving for her ultimate happiness. During the entire movie, Joy and Sadness maintain a relationship of conflict in Riley’s mind.

This teaches us that although joy is important, sadness plays a vital role in a person’s life, in that it can create outcomes that can result in being better understood, getting the attention we need, and ultimately being happier. In fact, the climactic and redemptive moment in the movie occurs when Riley communicates her sadness to her parents, and they shower her with love and affection, eventually leading to the rebuilding of her personality islands. I’m all for people being honest with how they feel, but the outcome of driving this message home is a bit frightening since pre-teen girls already have a penchant for using emotions (specifically crying) as an effective manipulation tool. Yikes! Is this what we really want to teach them?

The movie, as entertaining as it is, implies that the voices in our head are capricious characters at the controls of our mind who are fighting for control of our actions, reactions, and behaviors. However, there are deeper, more fundamental questions we should ask when we watch a movie that tells us that the ultimate goal of our lives is our own happiness. Or, that our emotions are essentially at the control panel of our mind. This may be true for some people but it doesn’t have to be true for you.

How to control the voices in your head

Recently at Youth at Calvary (YAC), we studied 2 Corinthians 10, which instructs us to “Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ”. We discussed the relationship between our spirit and soul, our mind and thoughts, and our words and actions. We asked the question “Who are you?” Are you at the mercy of your thoughts, whether they be good, bad, random etc.? Or, are you able to make value-based decisions about the thoughts that you choose to entertain and dwell on in your “train of thought”? We looked at verses like Psalm 1:1-2 and Philippians 4:8 which exhort us to spend time meditating on good things, in order to positively affect our minds.

Romans 12:2 instructs us outright to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds” while we deliberately avoid applying the world’s pattern of thinking to our lives. This presupposes that you can actually control what goes on in your mind. Will you settle for a stale and manipulated mind that’s controlled by your emotions or will you choose to be transformed with a renewed mind?
To really understand the answer to the question, “who am I?” we looked to Romans 7:15 which finds the Apostle Paul in the midst of a moral dilemma where he was trying to understand why he does bad things, which he doesn’t want to do. He proclaims “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law” (Romans 7:22). In other words, at the depth of his soul (his identity, the thing that makes him who he is) he is not the person who delights in doing evil. But because he is a new creation in Christ, his true identity is a person who loves God and delights in doing what is right.

I told students to practice a healthy thought-diet, which is one that consumes lots of healthy thoughts and “gongs” negative, sinful, and unhealthy thoughts.

What would a renewed mind look like in the metaphorical world of Inside out?

Certainly, emotions would not be the ones manning the control panel of our minds. But where do they sit? Do our thoughts control our emotions or vice versa? Some people seem to allow emotions to drive their thoughts. You hear stuff like “I can’t help it if I hate him” or “I can’t help it if I love her”. But can’t we control our emotions? Can’t we make a decision to think differently about a situation or person and thus control which emotions tend to bubble up as a result? Emotions seem to be out of our control, but they can be controlled when they’re directed by our thoughts.

There was a critical and important character missing in the Inside Out story. The missing character is the conductor who stands between our emotions and the levers on the control board that controls our actions. The conductor decides which emotions to give a voice to, which thoughts to entertain, and which reactions are the most beneficial regardless of how loudly our emotions are demanding to take over the controls.

Certainly, the conductor would be a complete weakling in the mind of a baby or a toddler, but by the time someone is a teenager (and certainly an adult), the conductor runs the show, with the emotions, capricious as they are, submitting to him. The train of thought wouldn’t be something that just meanders through the mind aimlessly without a conductor or destination or purpose. Our train of thought would be subject to the instruction of our mind’s conductor. With the conductor in control, our train of thought can be sent off on missions, and return with payloads of new ideas or solutions to our problems.

The conductor can be driven by principles, truths and goals like “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” or by selfish principles like, “Gotta do what makes me happy regardless of the cost to others”.

The Bible teaches that all people have a conductor which is our spirit. Regardless of how weak or how strong the conductor is, he's still there nevertheless. He may be sleeping at the controls and letting our emotions reign supreme and our thoughts run willy-nilly for good or for evil effect, or he may be running the show, controlling the “little voices inside your head”.