by Jacob Jones When Pixar first released Inside Out in the summer of 2015, I had just begun working at my local movie theater as floor staff, fresh out of my freshman year of college, and for the first time had gained total control over how many movies I got to see, and when I got to see them (relative to my work schedule). Of course, I had begun my embracing my cinephile self a few years earlier, often going to see things like Gone Girl or the premiere of How to Train Your Dragon 2 by myself, or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Pacific Rim with friends, while I sought other contemporary films out elsewhere, usually by taking a chance on blind-buying blu-rays. I was also coming to terms with battling depression around this time, understanding why I felt so much and yet seemingly unable to control my own sensitivities to how different things affected me emotionally. In short, I was in the perfect place both emotionally and physically for Inside Out to hit me like a ton of bricks. I saw it no less than four times in theaters, two of those times being on back-to-back days, and can still recall vividly each of the four spots where I cried during the movie (the Michael Giacchino score certainly didn’t help). It eventually landed at #2 in my Top 10 Films of 2015 – surpassed only by John Crowley’s Brooklyn – and still holds a high placement amongst my favorite Pixar releases.
Cut to nine years later, and Inside Out is still largely considered one of the last of the truly genius original works Pixar has made, as the studio has struggled to recapture the magic they once were the pinnacle of, instead focusing on sequels to other beloved works like Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. There was even a fourth Toy Story movie released, as well as a Lightyear spin-off film. Any other original properties Pixar has made thus far, from their pandemic releases like Soul, Luca, and Turning Red (all of which went straight to Disney+), to movies like Onward and Elemental, have all been generally well-received, but none have been as beloved or as big of hits as that first Inside Out film. In fact, only Coco seems to have come close in either capacity. And now, here we are at Inside Out 2, as Pixar once more attempts to re-capture the magic, or at least replicate the success, of one of the their most iconic original works. Riley is now thirteen years old and moving on up in the world. She has her loving parents, her two best friends, and her own sense of self, and is ready to experience new growth as she prepares for high school life. All her emotions are in complete sync, as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust have mastered the mind console to help Riley become her best self. There’s just one small problem: puberty is here to wreck shop. As she and her friends are invited to attend a three-day hockey camp intensive with one of the high school coaches, her sense of self is put to the test, and with these evolutions of inner and outer life come new and more complex feelings than the last ones, such as Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui. These new emotions threaten to destroy or irreparably alter the very foundations of who Riley is as a person, and it’s up to Joy and the gang to save Riley before her sense of self is altered forever. This sequel has an ambitious task ahead of it, not only in terms of the evolution of filmmaking in simply being a sequel to one of Pixar’s greatest works, but in how the movie itself tackles this intricately complicated subject matter across multiple planes of conceptual storytelling; how do you evolve the character of Riley while at the same time evolving the characters inside her mind that we already know and introduce new characters and concepts which must also evolve in just over ninety minutes? To put things lightly, that’s not an easy ask of any storyteller, so it’s admirable that for the most part that Inside Out 2 largely fulfills the ambitions it sets for itself, and the journey, for all the flaws it has, still feels natural and cohesive. Nothing feels forced, or as though the storytelling so desperately wants Riley to experience her new emotions that it forces the old ones out of the story entirely, nor does it so desperately want to create conflict out of nothing that it mischaracterizes the emotions we already know by having them force the new ones out at the first opportunity. In fact, the film handles its delicate balance of characters quite well; almost all of them feel as though they have an adequate amount of screen time and attention despite how many there are to juggle, even if some still feel a bit like back-burner joke characters overall. Anxiety, embarrassment, and Pouchy (you’ll get to know this one rather quickly) are all stand-outs from the new line, while Disgust gets a little more to do here than in the first film. It’s also still very creative in how it accomplishes showing the audience the ways in which different emotions effect Riley’s actions, particularly one climactic scene late in the film which may be the most accessibly-depicted version of that particular experience ever put to screen (I won’t spoil what it is, but you’ll know it when you see it). The film also evolves Riley’s outer life – the scenes outside her mind – in much more engaging ways than in the previous film. The real-life sequences in Inside Out aren’t bad by any stretch, but they’re a little plain overall, acting more as templates for the real story going on inside Riley’s mind than as fully fleshed-out plots in and of themselves. With Inside Out 2, following Riley herself is much more interesting; we actually enjoy seeing how she evolves as a person, how she navigates her friendships and her relationships to authority and those around her. As she makes new friends, we actually care about how this affects her current ones, and we’re invested in her successes and failures inside the hockey camp she attends. For something that didn’t necessarily need a bump in audience engagement, it’s nice that the filmmakers and writers gave us reasons to want to get out of Riley’s mind as much as we wanted to be in it. Where this film unfortunately runs into trouble is inside that very mind, not so much in terms of the characters, but more in terms of the worldbuilding aspect that the first film nailed so beautifully. Riley’s mind in Inside Out is a tapestry of rich, interesting worldbuilding, with so much variety in how concepts of identity, emotion, and memory are explored even in the smallest of dialogue exchanges that it truly feels like her brain is a genuinely fun place to explore. There are certainly new mental concepts introduced in Inside Out 2, but they’re almost all relegate to headquarters, and we spend so much time there just focusing on what Anxiety is doing that we don’t get to explore the rest of Riley’s mind that much. Without getting into spoilers, there’s really only one scene that expands the world in the same ways the last one continually did, while almost all the rest of the new stuff outside of headquarters is just alluded to, without actually being examined. Of course, it doesn’t help that as the story continues, it becomes somewhat repetitive: anxiety is sort of helping Riley navigate growing up in an uncertain time in her life but is mostly steering her towards a disastrous break, and Joy and the gang need to stop this from happening. The film never really breaks from this line or even entertains the idea that things might go in a different direction. Even in the progression of the plot, no matter what obstacles the emotions face, the goal remains the exact same, and while lessons are learned, those lessons don’t ultimately change the goals or ultimate ends of any of the characters we already know. And as far as the new characters to whom we’re introduced, it makes sense that Anxiety would just take over and run the show for most of the film’s runtime, but we do feel the lack of variety in the new emotions (Envy gets the shortest end of the stick here) because of that choice in the storytelling. (Also, this is a little nit-picky, I’ll admit, but the musical score and the comedy just did not hit the same this time around. Many of Giacchino’s original themes are present, but are so burdened by other instrumentation being layered on top of them that they fail to get a chance to really shine through or punch the emotion of certain moments. Additionally, there are a decent number of jokes to keep things entertaining – including one callback from the first film that’s easily the best joke in the movie – but the emphasis on a more serious tone and more dramatic plotting somewhat sap the film of the same comic cleverness the first film was practically covered in.) Overall, while I admire Inside Out 2’s creative swings and ambitious storytelling, it can’t measure up to the magic of its predecessor. Maybe that’s simply due to how the storytelling evolves with more serious subject matter, or maybe it’s because I was simply in the perfect spot in my life for the first one to release, and the spot I’m in now doesn’t quite match with this one, but nevertheless, it’s a fact that must be faced. It certainly tries its hardest to evolve the storytelling from the first film in a way that makes sense and honors that legacy, and it largely succeeds in its ambitious task of making that progression feel natural, but the lack of more exploratory worldbuilding and somewhat repetitive story end up stifling the rest of what it could have been. Still, it’s decently well-balanced, the evolution of Riley’s outer life was nicely-handled, and it’s still one of the better Pixar sequels outside of the Toy Story franchise. I’m giving “Inside Out 2” a 7.6/10 - The Friendly Film Fan
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