Inside Out 2 Movie Review - Déjà Vu
Of all the classic Pixar films I have seen in my lifetime, whether it’d be “The Incredibles”, “Wall-E”, “Finding Nemo”, “Ratatouille”, “Up”— and who could forget the “Toy Story” movies (seriously, there’s no reason for there to be five movies let alone four) — “Inside Out” was never one of my favorites. I know, I know, it’s a hot take and I’m quite the Debbie Downer sometimes, but the point still stands. I’m not saying that it’s “Brave” or “Turning Red” levels of mediocrity, the movie is pretty lukewarm and adequate in my books, it’s just something that I haven't been particularly passionate about nor is it a remarkable animated classic.
And it’s not because it’s praised for its original storytelling, despite having a premise that really isn’t all that original…it’s just that the movie, as you melt the bells and whistles, doesn’t hold up well. It was narratively deliberate, with two-dimensional characters and mechanics of the film’s setting are inconsistent. There are funny and some endearing moments to be had, sure, but it’s not like you won’t find those elements immensely perfected in director Pete Doctor’s latter work or other brilliant Pixar films of the past.
As the years went by, Pixar’s creativity and commercial success fell from grace. First of all, their previous sequels, while they’ve made gangbusters, were both disappointing and undeniable downgrades from the sequels or original material before them. Second of all, by the time a coronavirus came and shut down the economy, Pixar was in quite the pickle. With the intention of releasing two personal animation films into theaters, “Luca” and “Turning Red”, they were shelved into Disney+, until many years later where they finally reached cinemas for a few weeks. Whenever the Voldemort Virus subsided, just when they thought the Toy Story spin-off, “Lightyear” would knock it out of the park, the result was a foul ball as it financially bombed at the box office, not to mention the fact that the film wasn’t any good.
Now Pixar is heading back to square one by making more sequels to films that don’t need them to reach box office gold again. Case in point: Inside Out 2. Picking up years after the original and introducing brand new emotions, complicated themes and ways in which the body works and giving you all of the moments that hit you right in the feels. For all of its ambitious ideas about the concepts of complex emotions and beliefs, I don’t think that “Inside Out 2” as a whole is all that impressive. It sounds like the words of a contrarian, but the thing is that it’s not that good, and exemplifies why Pixar still is in search of another creative non-sequel breakthrough since 2003’s “Finding Nemo”. But hey, it’s at least a better sequel than “Toy Story 4” and “Incredibles 2”…I guess.
Inside Out 2 brings us back to the five emotions, positively keeping Riley's mindset and emotions in check and helping her accomplish her dreams as a hockey player. This time, things take a very weird direction once Riley hits puberty. Modifications to the console are added, and newer, complex emotions enter into the headquarters. One of whom is an orange nervous emotion named Anxiety who takes command of everything with her three other companions and plans to aide Riley as she is selected for tryouts of a high school hockey program. For her plan to be executed to perfection, she throws out the original emotions out, leaving our original band of heroes to travel through Riley’s mind to go back to headquarters and make things right.
Doesn’t this story sound familiar to anyone? Well, it should be because aside from a few elements and world-building additions to make it a tad different from before, it’s almost beat-for-beat rehash of the same story as the first “Inside Out”. Characters who are literally different from one another are separated from the headquarters while the newer and less manageable ones mess with Riley’s mindset and emotions that could jeopardize her major aspirations and relationships. As they traverse Riley’s mind through comedic, hectic and dramatic shenanigans, our characters get put into a grim situation where all appears to be lost, up until a magical and lazily written plot device comes in to save the day and bring them back to headquarters. Thus, resolving our emotions by learning something about each other and ending with Riley finding success and fulfillment.
It’s so paint by numbers you can see the plot paint itself. You can figure out every single plot beat, predict precisely when the emotional and comedic hi-jinks come into fold as if Pixar is holding a big sign to the audience telling them to laugh or cry at this part of the story. It’s not like I’m Nostradamus, that is how formulaic this movie is. Almost every other joke that you’ve seen the other emotions project is pretty much almost replicated or subverted, though I have to admit there were a bunch of clever and unexpected comedic moments in the film that did make me laugh.
As for our main cast, vocal performances from reprising voice actors (Amy Poehler as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger) to newcomers (Tony Hale and Liza Lapira as Disgust) do a fundamental job of bringing to life the special energy and charm the original characters had. Character-wise, the secondary characters are reduced to their most basic attributes and Joy, almost repeats the same arc from the original.
As for the new emotions, they only serve as cameos or one-dimensional sidekicks, at best. Embarrassment is exactly who you think that character would be and has an arc that a child would see coming, Ennui behaves just like me when I was watching the film, and Envy is one with adorable character design, but absent character development. Anxiety is perhaps the best written emotional character of the lot and the driving force of the plot. As a frantic, energy-drink consuming character, Maya Hawke does a terrific job encapsulating her overthinking behavior and persistence. I even admire how the film recognizes that her intentions are to help Riley reach her goals and knowing what’s best for her, while not realizing she is doing much more harm than good.
If there’s anything that has impressed me more than the final product itself, it is the animation. Not just for the photo-realistic, polished and exuberant cartoon models for the characters and their world that we’ve been used to since the original, but for other additional animation styles such combining as two-dimensional drawings to the world, even including 3D pixelated video game animation (with remarkable touches to a character who requires D-Pad motion to move) and in one particular segment, the use of construction paper stop-motion as the emotions are laying out a plan to make it back home. Though this marriage of art styles has been done before in better movies, it honestly felt like a breath of fresh air from Pixar, because as we are used to them making visual artwork with the same animation style for years, never have we seen something so experimental from them in a long time.
This review is probably shorter than most, but yeah, there’s not much else to say about “Inside Out 2” except the fact that Pixar spent $200 million just so they can make the same film twice. As far as we know, this movie is already a huge hit at the box office. But just because a vapid, predictable movie like this is making so much money, doesn’t mean that this film is worth anything more than a rental.
Rating: 2.5/5
