As I was being dragged to the movie theatre by my boyfriend around 9 p.m. the other night, all I could think about was the amount of premium sleeping time I was going to be missing out on. Getting up for work at 7 a.m. every day doesn't really get easier, contrary to what everyone says. The only thing that was keeping me from demanding to be dropped off at my apartment to slip into some pajamas and hit they hay was my love for all things Disney and my other half's insistence that I couldn't miss seeing Inside Out. Truthfully, I was getting less and less excited by the minute.

I should let you know that I’m a crier, and this is something I readily admit. I cry when big-eyed puppies pop up on my screen while Sarah McLachlan’s disembodied voice simultaneously sings "Angel" and asks me to give everything I have in my wallet. I cry when watching re-runs of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition because who doesn’t? I even cry when I have a pleasant experience at the grocery store because when did it become so dang hard to be nice to shoppers, people?

Inside Out made me sob embarrassingly not because it was sad or I was just so happy at its end, but because this movie gave me immense relief for the next generation.

Inside Out is a movie about what is going on inside the mind (literally) of an 11 year old girl named Riley when her family moves across the country from Minnesota to San Francisco. Riley's brain is filled with different and rather industrial sections where memory, emotions, and other brain functions are stored and carried out. Punnily enough, the main control of Riley's decision making takes place in Headquarters, where the emotions Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust reside.

Throughout the film Joy, the emotion in charge (or so she thinks), is constantly taking over the decision-making so that she can be sure that Riley is happy. However, things begin to change once Joy and Sadness are both accidentally dislocated from Headquarters and have to venture through the mind to make it back before Riley loses all feeling. Needless to say, while Sadness and Joy are on their way back to Headquarters, the remaining emotions (namely Fear, Disgust, and Anger) are left in charge, and you can guess how that turns out.

Disney and Pixar have created a film that targets a younger audience and forces them to confront unpleasant emotions during a time when it seems like everyone is claiming that their ultimate goal in life is to just be “happy.” These powerhouses in children's entertainment have made something worth watching not because of the cute characters and the fairytale storyline, but because this is a message that real viewers need.

While this movie is a cinematic masterpiece crafted beautifully on the screen, Disney and Pixar have managed to make a semi-taboo topic the main focus of a children's movie. This movie shows viewers that it's okay to be sad and to not pretend like everything is okay when it's not. Society is trying to teach its youngest inhabitants that sadness is not normal, that talking about your emotions makes you weird, and Inside Out directly combats this.

As a pre-teen and teenager, I struggled with anxiety and feelings of sadness for prolonged periods of time. While I’m not going to bore you with my childhood and any problems I had, I do want to explain to you why this movie had my chest feeling lighter from a weight it seamlessly brushed off in a matter of 1 hour and 35 minutes. It is so refreshing to see a movie, from Disney and Pixar no less, that threatens the core of the American family – this idea of pursuing happiness and pushing aside any other feelings that may threaten it to be accepted as normal among your peers.

After being told for years that happiness is the ultimate destination in life and feeling like my sadness and wide range of emotions made me an outcast, I knew that this movie could change the way people reacted towards expressions of so-called “negative” emotions, especially in children. I knew that maybe a little girl who was like I was could now have someone understand why she was so sad or angry and want to listen to her instead of telling her to just “get happy.”

The complexity of emotions is played down in an appropriate and understandable way in Inside Out so that the target audience, these children, can comprehend that life isn't about black and white, happy or unhappy. Memories and how you remember them all depend on your experiences in life, where you are at that moment. Now, your memories with your parents are hopefully happy for the most part, but after they are gone, these happy memories may be marred by the sadness that naturally comes along with missing a loved one. Things change, situations become complicated, and Inside Out is the first of many movies, I predict, to change the way society deals with emotions.