Posted in: Disney, Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Pixar, Review | Tagged: Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 Review: A Good Movie That Struggles with Mixed Emotions

Inside Out 2 isn't one of Pixar's worst films, not by a long shot, but it's also not one of the best either, and considering the film it is following, it really needed to be better.

Inside Out 2 isn't nearly as good as the first one and doesn't take advantage of its own big ideas, but it's another entry in the "that's pretty damn good" entries of Pixar films.

Director: Kelsey Mann
Summary: Follows Riley, in her teenage years, encountering new emotions.

Inside Out 2: The Pixar Film For The Anxious Messes Of The World

Pixar came out of the pandemic in a very strange situation, with three of its major releases pushed to streaming and a release right before the pandemic getting kneecapped by theaters shutting down. Then Lightyear underperformed, and Elemental was, for lack of a better turn of phrase, a slow burn at the box office, and those make studios nervous. So it really isn't surprising that they decided to delay Elio, another film based on an original story, so they could get a sequel to a movie that is often cited as one of the best the studio has ever made. Inside Out is often in people's top five Pixar films, if not the top three, so Inside Out 2 had the uphill battle of trying to be as good as its predecessor. And, while the film is pretty good, with some genuinely great moments, it doesn't hit as hard as the previous movie did, and many members of the expanded cast are left on the sidelines.

Being a teenager is not easy, and expanding the emotions that Riley has to deal with when she gets older is a concept that makes a lot of sense in this world. When you're young, you don't have a lot of complex emotions, but when you get older, you start to experience more things, and emotions like anxiety, envy, and others are more prevalent. That is a good concept for a sequel to Inside Out, and the time we get with Anxiety specifically is great. There has probably never been a better visual example of what anxiety is and what it feels like than what this film has created. If you've ever struggled with it, everything with Anxiety is going to hit like a gut punch and will probably be the best part of the movie for you. If the film had just introduced Anxiety as the new Emotion, it would have been great.

However, it's not the only Emotion that is introduced; instead, we get three other Emotions that we spend almost no time with. The film seems eager to explore the idea of Anxiety and how that impacts someone, even going so far as to show it physically impacting Riley at one point, but they never do the same with Ennui. That feels like malaise, not wanting to get out of bed, and not caring about anything or anyone; that is also extremely common in teenagers. We see how some of the Emotions play off of each other, like Fear and Anxiety or Sadness and Embarassment, but the film never takes the time to explore that. By focusing solely on this one Emotion and how it impacts Riley, everything else feels very pushed to the side and perfunctory by the end of Inside Out 2.

The film also tries to deal with the idea of "suppressed emotions" because the other Emotions are kicked out of headquarters for the latter part of the film. That is a big idea and something that the film really could have explored. They are quite literally denying Riley any sense of Joy by kicking Joy out of headquarters. They are getting rid of her physical sense of Fear that keeps her safe; there's no Anger or Disgust; these are all massive Emotions that she is missing that are in no way replaced by the new ones, and the film never really deals with it. There isn't any moment where we see the ramifications of Riley's emotions being suppressed. Instead, it becomes about the core belief system and what that means. It feels like yet another missed opportunity and a big idea that the film introduces and then does nothing with.

The problem is that trying to top Inside Out was always going to be hard, and while you can tell that a lot of thought went into expanding the world of Inside Out 2, it also doesn't feel nearly as polished as the other film. It's bigger, and there is more going on, but that also means there is a lot that gets left to the side. Sadness and Joy's dynamic was considered one of the highlights of the previous film, and that is completely ignored in this one. They give Fear, Disgust, and Anger bigger roles, but apparently, those bigger roles weren't enough to merit giving the actors decent wages. The film does what Pixar does best: it is funny and tugs on your heartstrings, but it never has the emotional impact of seeing Bing-Bong fade away.

Inside Out 2 isn't one of Pixar's worst films, not by a long shot, but it's also not one of the best either, and considering the film it is following, it really needed to be better. It's a film with many ideas and only so much allotted time to explore all of them. Instead of just not introducing all of these ideas and really digging into the thing they wanted to explore, they introduce everything and leave the audience rather unsatisfied in many ways. Still, this is Pixar, and their "pretty damn good" is better than what other studios might put out; it's just a shame to see Inside Out 2 walk right up to the line of being great and never quite cross it.

Inside Out 2

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Review by Kaitlyn Booth

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8/10

Inside Out 2 isn't nearly as good as the first one and doesn't take advantage of its own big ideas, and it's another entry in the "that's pretty damn good" entries of Pixar films.

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