I am inclined to agree with Gulino that the movie gives the spotlight to the personification of Riley's emotions at the expense of Riley the person. And it is rather amazing, when I think about it, that the other emotions, particularly Anger, are rather ineffectual while Joy is off on her journey down memory lanes with Sadness. Anger is the natural candidate to have seized control of the console in Joy's absence. Surely, Riley isn't just sad. She would also be mad that she has been forced to uproot her life, lose her friends, start all over again. And surely Fear should have been involved in Riley's decision to get off the bus, return home. No doubt about it, Joy is a bossy Alpha character-emotion, a control freak who doesn't trust, who discounts the validity and necessity of the other emotions, who can't let go of control of the console. I viewed this as her character flaw. But, hey, it's a movie, not psychoanalysis nor cognitive behavioral therapy.

I thought Anger DID seize control of the console. And midway through Act II at the dinner table, unless I'm mistaken, Riley displayed a bunch of different emotions including Anger and Disgust. I'll say this about Gulino's article and buttressed in part by your reaction, Paul: This question Gulino raised up front -- "Whose story is it" -- is a critical one for any writer to determine in any project. And I'm guessing there is probably a considerable portion of folks who watched Inside Out who felt like you and Gulino: The decision to focus on Joy diminished Riley as a character. OTOH there's this and this, so there are a lot of people who connected with the movie. To your point about Joy, nice articulation of her character. In a way, she is kind of blinded by 'joy', isn't she? She thinks that should be the default of Riley's life experience and probably everyone. So in this case, I think the word flaw is an apt one. She is blind to the realities of a more nuanced world. As always, thanks for your insights and opinions!

Really interesting discussion. First off I have to say that my five year old granddaughter looked to me as if she was being tortured during the first half of the film, she didn't get it at all. Where the heck is thumbelina or at least tinkerbell? I think she was thinking that. Five year olds will not get this movie! Disclosure, my day job is therapist with traumatized children and adults so I immediately went to see movie which a colleague lauded. After reading your comments and Gulino's I have to say he makes excellent points. Joy is the "heroine" which does make assumptions about our basic emotional tone. Not to go on too long, but have to say that "anger" does not get enough credit as a positive motivating force. One thing I found really interesting (way above most kids heads) is the idea of emotional deadness during the runaway scenes. That felt true on so many levels.

It's a brilliant movie that deserves an Oscar. That said, I also agree with PaulG and Gulino that I would have preferred a more Riley-the-person-heavy balance between storylines. Inception also faced this problem. How to balance the storylines in Limbo and Fischer's subconscious with the basic thru-line of the inception --would Cobb & team succeed so Cobb (and ultimately Saito) could go home? Not saying Nolan's solution was perfect either. One could argue that the emotion-laden stories (i.e. the stories of Fischer's subconscious and Cobb's subconscious) got a bit short changed in that one. But overall, the balance felt better/more effective to me. Nolan did a great job investing us in the external storyline, i.e. Cobb pulling off the "real-life" reverse con or the inception. Some of that had to do with the time spent in setting up the con and the team, some of that was the very high stakes attached to the success of the con. The comparison does raise the question of whether they made Riley an active enough character. Riley-the-real person, despite her sadness/depression, could have been even more active in real life. I think even a bit more time spent with a schoolmate or new neighbor would have helped. I too would have liked to see her anger kick in in real life in more situations than just the dinner with her parents. As anger does when we--child or adult--feel frustrated and ignored.... I also think the stakes of running away and/or fitting in in the new school could have been even more effectively done. Again, investing us in her new home through a particular potential friend at school or elsewhere would have helped. In the end, it's always difficult to second guess these things. The writers were already juggling so much. Could they have made a more effective Riley-the-real-person storyline? A real life external journey that had even more points of contact with the internal journey? I'd like to think so. But who knows. The fact is they made an amazing movie. And I love that they tackled a subject--female depression--that is rarely discussed and furthermore turned the conventional wisdom--that the problem is the sadness itself--on its head. So many, many kudos to them!

Lois, I think you're right. This is one Pixar movie which skews older than their typical young end of target demo. It's pretty sophisticated stuff going on. I've read lots of comments here and elsewhere re a wish the movie had spent more time on Anger as a "motivating force". Can't say I disagree, however per screenstudent's following comment, how much can a filmmaker do? It's easy to toss off a comment like, "More Anger!" But the story is ALREADY a complex one. It might have lost its focus on the Joy-Sadness-Riley fulcrum had Anger been elevated. Re emotional deadness: Good point. I think it's fair to say Riley was depressed. She had no logical recourse of action. And she had all these negative feelings. So to make her more active would have made her character feel less true for you, I would think. Again I wonder how much of the critique in this regard derives from the supposed screenwriting 'rule' about the necessity of having an Active Protagonist / not having a Passive Protagonist, and assessing Riley's role through that lens. Even though I have argued she isn't passive, she is reactive.

screenstudent, you hit the nail on the head with this comment: "The writers were already juggling so much. Could they have made a more effective Riley-the-real-person storyline? A real life external journey that had even more points of contact with the internal journey? I’d like to think so. But who knows." As I understand it, this movie was a particularly problematic one getting from concept to screen. As it is, the narrative is a really complex one. To upgrade Anger's role or make Riley more active would by definition diminish Joy and upend the depressive state Riley finds herself in. You start messing around with what is, in my view, a really solid, yet fragile story structure, it could all come tumbling down. At the end of the day, I think the emotional logic of the story trumps any sort of rational logic because if we allow ourselves to settle into Riley's sadness -- WHICH IS HER DOMINANT FEELING POST-MOVE -- the story works wonderfully. It doesn't HAVE to be more than it is to resonate with audiences. And the B.O. numbers prove that. Beyond all that, I suspect this movie may have longstanding effects on children as they grow up and families as they grapple with their children's emotional upheaval. Thanks for your observations! I hope like hell this script receives awards nominations.

Re: Anger as a motivating force. One of the aspects that I really appreciated about the film was that each person we saw (Riley, her mother, her father, the teacher etc) had a separate emotion at the centre of the console. I had a screenwriting tutor raise the idea that each of us have a different centric emotion to our experiences, a presiding emotion that colours how we move through life. In our class we broke down mostly to sadness/melancholy or anger. So, the idea of certain emotions playing a backseat role had a resonance for me, especially when Riley is our focus and other characters were shown to have a different hierarchy.

Personally I found the most resonance with Riley when her Emotions were less in (physical) control. The bus ride and the class room scene were where I felt the most connected to her as a separate character from her emotions. Perhaps the "emotional deadness" was that space where I as the audience member was allowed to empathise more rather than experience alongside. In the first act, where her every action seemed derived directly from her Emotions I was less emotionally engaged with her as a person because her reactions were expressed as a product. On the other hand, I realise that this was a really phenomenal way of laying down all the exposition regarding the inner workings of the mind and setting out almost all of the key points for the plot to come. I wonder if this emotional gap is a case where, as human beings we will mostly always preference a emotional engagement with the most human avatar when given a choice. So, our preference for emotional engagement would be Riley above Joy simply because she appears more human (or "closer to us"). Just a random thought...

I'm sure Scott has mentioned this article somewhere but if not or if you haven't read it, it's a great read that explains the scientific studies on which the filmmakers drew. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-inside-out.html