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Home > 5 LIFE LESSONS FROM ANIMATED MOVIES
5 LIFE LESSONS FROM ANIMATED
MOVIES
They may be movies for kids, but animated movies can be a powerful teacher if you watch
them with an open mind and heart…
Okay, let me just say that watching animated movies is a sort of compunction for me. I have
two boys aged 6 and 4 and while I simply have to watch “boy” toons such as PJ Masks, Paw
Patrol and even Slugterra or Sonic with them, I make it a point to intersperse their TV viewing
with what I consider good animated entertainment. So yes, I do mean movies like Brave,
Frozen, Up and Horton Hears a Who…
While flicks like Inside Out, Coraline and The Little Prince obviously leave you with far more
brain chatter than you began with, even the so-called nonsensical ones such as Kung Fu
Panda, or the heartwarming ones like Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, leave you with tiny
little realizations. And if you just open your heart, mind and soul to these tiny life lessons – you
might just find yourself being in a far more joyful place, long after the movie has ended. Here
are five life lessons that I took from animated movies… Or you can just watch movies for
some inspiration.
Looks don’t maketh the panda, a hero or me
The entire premise of the first Kung Fu Panda movie was that of an unlikely hero. Far from the
graceful tigress, the swift monkey or the lightning fast viper – Po is a fat, jiggly, clumsy panda
who does nothing more adventurous than serving noodle soup to customers in his father’s
restaurants. But he has a dream, as impossible as it may seem to everyone around. And
whatever be his body, his heart is that of a warrior – he never gives up. A more unlikely hero
I’ve not come across, but it warms the cockles of my heart – watching a pudgy, huge,
immensely hungry panda overcome not just his emotional eating, but also fight real battles
and ultimately win the hearts of everyone around by sheer persistence and for want of a better
word, goodness.
Never, ever, give up on your goal
It’s like Dory says, “just keep swimming” – and that’s all there is to it. You keep swimming,
walking, running, jumping, crawling, rolling, and moving in any way you can towards your
goal, with a cheerful single-mindedness that takes you through it all. In Finding Nemo, it’s all
about parental love interspersed with inadvertent friends who lend a helping hand when least
expected. And in Finding Dory, along with going after your heart’s desire, it’s also about
accepting your friends and family for who they really are – the complete package, faults and
all. Both the movies are heart-warming in their own way, though many of us can perhaps
relate to Finding Dory more – the losing-a-kid plot in Finding Nemo is scary beyond words.
It’s really not too late, ever
Perhaps this is the best lesson ever from an animated movie: it doesn’t matter how old you
are in the body, or even how aged you feel at heart – going after your dreams is a journey you
can take anytime, anywhere and anyplace. Up’s premise starts very real and for sure, the plot
takes a crazy turn about 20-minutes into the movie. Imaginative it may be, and somewhat
impossible too – but the utter and sheer, well, uplifting feeling that you get from this movie is
unmistakable. The movie makes you believe that no dream is impossible. It’s a courageous
set of characters you encounter in the movie – from an old man chasing his late wife’s dream,
to a young boy trying to come to terms with his parents’ divorce and finally to a creature who’s
just trying to get home to her offspring – it’s a beautiful world the movie creates, and ultimately
Up gives you a fresh dose of faith in yourself.
Accept yourself, for the world to accept you
No other movie than Wreck It Ralph stays truer to this premise – Ralph is the official wrecker
of a game in a video arcade. His job is to wreck things in anger, which the goody-goody hero
Fixit Felix fixes in a jiffy with his hammer – the game ends with Felix winning a medal and
Ralph being thrown off the building. In the movie, all Ralph wants to do is win a medal and be
considered good. He never believes in himself – his fixation being the medal. As the plot
unravels, Ralph slowly realizes that the goodness he is seeking outside, lies within him all
through.
He may have started out as the anti-hero wanting more, but the movie ends with him not
wanting anything but to do good – and people finally seeing his true self only when he accepts
himself first. And so the lesson – who you are, what you are, how you are – needs to be
accepted first by you; the world will fall into line sooner or later.
Stop running from your fears – real or otherwise
Although many movies have tried to show this premise in many different ways, it’s the movie
Home that truly brings it home, in style. The Boov society lives in fear, revels in fear. Despite
being intelligent beings with sophisticated technology, the Boov tend to take preventive action
for everything and, the Gorg (their bloodthirsty enemy) simply makes them run. Every time, all
the time. In fact, the Boov consider themselves “best at running away”.
So when O meets the very human Tip, he is flabbergasted by her head-on problem solving
approach -- only to realize that fears of the Boov were unjustified and baseless all along.
When you fear something and run away, the fear itself ends up chasing you. Standing up to
your fears, being brave in the face of bone-crunching, soul-shaking terror is what gets you
through. Again, every time, all the time.
So there you have it – child-oriented movies that can give us adults a run for our money, when
it comes to teaching good to the mind, heart and soul. Do share any life lessons that you
learnt from animated movies with us in the comments section below…
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