Pixar has recently been making sequels to some of its most acclaimed films, and their success with fans has been decidedly mixed. For every Toy Story 3, there’s a Cars 2. This year sees the release of Inside Out 2, a sequel to one of the studio’s most acclaimed movies in the past decade. Although the sequel is mostly inferior, it’s still plenty funny and heartwarming enough to be worth watching.
Inside Out 2 picks up with Riley as a 13-year-old when she begins puberty and encounters a new set of complex emotions during an important transition in her life from middle school to high school. For a film that is supposed to be about the complexity of emotions, it’s a bit underwhelming that the story and emotions are so simplistic, but there’s still plenty to praise here.
The area where Inside Out 2 is most lacking compared to its predecessor is the storyline involving Riley. Although the human characters were hardly the biggest strength of the first movie, this sequel offers an unexpectedly formulaic coming-of-age story. What made Inside Out so special was that it took these universal and familiar themes and ideas and subverted them. Instead, Inside Out 2 feels comfortable playing into the audience’s nostalgia — both for when they were growing up and for the first film that came out nearly a decade ago.
Inside Out 2 is not as good as the first
As a result, this sequel also feels like it lacks the emotional resonance, not only of its predecessor — a crowning triumph in emotional storytelling — but for the Pixar brand as a whole. The script by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein feels like it’s just another goofy adventure. While there is certainly plenty of authenticity when it comes to its exploration of anxiety, the movie is limited by its short runtime and need to consistently entertain audiences both young and old.
It’s also disappointing to see that this sequel did not take the opportunity to flesh out the world in exciting new ways. The new areas of the mind we get to see — like her sense of self and the “back of her mind” — are derivative and plain, respectively. Even though there was a gap of nine years between this sequel and the original, the lack of creativity in the world-building (apart from two genuinely memorable sequences) makes it feel like this was incredibly rushed.
That being said, where the film does show a lot of imagination is its new characters. The new emotions — Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment — are the stars of the show in Inside Out 2. Understandably, Anxiety is much more developed as a character considering the thematic and narrative focus on said emotion, but the other trio all get their moments to shine. And the new cast, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edibiri, Adele Exarchopoulos, and Paul Walter Hauser, are quite good in their roles.
The only area in which Inside Out 2 is an unequivocal improvement over the first movie is its humor. While Inside Out’s jokes were more subtle, there are more than a few laugh-out-loud moments in this one. Although several of the best moments were already revealed or alluded to in the trailers and marketing materials, they are even funnier in context.
Is Inside Out 2 Worth Watching?
Inside Out 2 not only doesn’t live up to the incredible heights of the first film, but it’s also one of Pixar’s weakest outings in general. Still, there are enough funny and heartwarming moments to make up for this not having the same profound impact as Inside Out.
Inside Out 2 hits theaters on June 14.
8/10
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