Alright! Today, I'm reviewing Pixar's Inside Out 2, the sequel to 2015's highly acclaimed Inside Out, a movie about 13-year-old Riley Anderson and how her traumatic move to San Francisco is viewed through the five primary emotions in her mind: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Widely hailed as the last "great" Pixar film, Inside Out 2 begs the question: But could we squeeze more money out of it?
First of all, I liked the overall development and themes of the film; the way I interpreted it, the main conflict is stated succinctly enough when Anxiety says, "Riley's life is more complex now; it requires more sophisticated emotions." Riley's growing up! The five core emotions aren't enough for her increasingly complex life and circumstances! The addition of Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui is necessary! Inside Out 2 did a great job at showing some of the circumstances where one of these new emotions would be needed to give Riley the appropriate social reaction. Consequently, some of the drama in the movie feels very merited.
The impact these new emotions have is heartbreaking - Joy's character arc deals a lot with realizing how to step aside and share the control board in Riley's head, and when an unwelcome emotion accidentally takes control and causes Riley to make questionable decisions, Joy has to go on a journey of self-discovery while navigating Riley's mind with the film's macguffin to fix everything.
Now, the problem is that this is the exact same conflict that happens in the first movie, down to a T. I think the punch of "Maybe this is what happens when you grow up: You feel less joy." is more profound than anything they said in the first Inside Out, but other than that, everything is on autopilot repeat. None of the jokes are as funny, none of the beats are as emotional, and all the new parts of Riley's mind seem more like leftover puns used out of necessity than genuinely innovative ("Brain Storm" is a major plot point here, while "Brain Freeze" was a throwaway joke in the first movie).
I liked all of the new emotions, for the most part. Anxiety is the perfect "villain" for a modern kid's movie; Envy was necessary as a villain sidekick to share the blame, and Embarrassment absolutely stole the show. Ennui... you could have cut Ennui from the film with 0 problems, she does nothing. But I like that the teenager has an emotion in her head that doomscrolls! That seems right.
I also really liked how relatable the entire movie was. Pixar really went above and beyond to craft a relatable story full of things that every child has experienced; Riley has friends who are moving away, she wants to make new friends, she wants to spend time with old friends, she has desires to cheat and break the rules, she pushes herself harder but never feels good enough, she tells tiny lies and then gets trapped by inconsistencies, and her phone is never charged. I think I even heard a "lit" somewhere in there! It's also important that Pixar knocked it out of the ballpark with this, because the realism of the "real world" scenes grounds the movie emotionally, as the actual emotions sure aren't.
This is where the review takes a spin for the negative, unfortunately. Despite likable characters and a few good emotional beats here and there, Inside Out 2 not only pales in comparison to its predecessor but is also just a bland movie in general. I think a lot of that stems to the fact that the drama feels very rushed. The other emotions rebel against Joy after she leads them down one (1) wrong turn in the maze, Joy tries to inspire the beans to stop Anxiety's nightmares after saying one (1) motivational thing, and the bad memories being thrown to the back of the mind feel like an arbitrary lesson as soon as it's introduced. It pales in every aspect ot the original movie. The animation also seems less despite being more photorealistic; the fuzz on the emotions and Joy's floating sparkles look noticeably downgraded. The music isn't memorable in the slightest, and the Inside Out theme barely appears, whose absence I greatly felt. It also isn't as funny as the first one.
I think we forget just how good the first Inside Out is; it is one of Pixar's great masterpieces, and a sequel had a lot to live up to.
However, we also have to ask ourselves if any of those things matter. The target audience isn't walking into this with a pen and notebook, looking for criticisms; they'll be happy to see all these characters again, and the new emotions will be a lot of fun. But any adults watching Inside Out 2 might be wondering why Pixar stopped making movies like Inside Out.
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