Review Roundup: Kelsey Mann’s Inside Out 2
Is it too much to say that 2015’s Inside Out was the last truly great Pixar film? With its clever premise and perfect balance of laughter, heartbreak, and sensitivity, the film won the hearts and minds of critics and fans alike, and earned a slew of awards including an Oscar for “Best Animated Feature.”
Subsequent Pixar films, like Incredibles 2, Onward, Soul, and Turning Red, weren’t terrible — they all had their charms — but neither did they quite match up to the studio’s earlier titles. Which has raised concerns as to whether or not Pixar, once the standard bearer for movie animation, has lost its way. Concerns that are certainly not helped by the studio’s plans to focus on sequels and reboots.
Enter Inside Out 2. Does the latest journey through Riley’s emotions — Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and a bunch of new ones led by Anxiety — hold up against Pixar’s earlier fare? Or is it just more potential evidence that Pixar’s lost the plot?
That’s the beauty of these Inside Out movies. They actively engage with difficult psychological concepts and, at their best, find a way to dramatize them that makes thematic sense and encourages us all to think about them differently. It’s a powerful story told intelligently and with great wit. Kelsey Mann was able to expand on what seemed like a complete story in the original film and tell a new and potent one, and that’s impressive and commendable even though — like many Pixar films — it falls apart in the details.
After seeing Turning Red pushed to Disney+ while a lukewarm film like Lightyear took its theatrical place, it’s taken far too many years for the studio to have a distinguished domestically released animated adventure. Even as a reintroduction to a familiar world, Kelsey Mann’s feature directorial debut Inside Out 2, a zippy yet gooey animated quest about belonging and individuality during teenage girlhood feels like a final, albeit predictable, return to normalcy.
For all the brilliance of its design, no Pixar movie has ever provoked so little sense of wonder (say what you will about Larry the Cable Guy voicing a buck-toothed tow-truck, but at least it leaves you with some urgent questions about the world). For all the creativity of its construction, Inside Out 2 feels like a form of AI cinema, happy to animate human thoughts but incapable of thinking for itself.
Under Mann’s direction, the filmmakers have crafted a tale that subtly captures the loss of childhood innocence as a person transitions into their teenage years. It’s hard and, conceptually, as many parents are aware, it’s sometimes sad. And that young adult needs to experience these tougher and more complex emotions to help shape them into who they will be years down the road. Life experiences are not limited to just happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The first movie touched on that, but this second chapter takes an even more sophisticated perspective of that inevitable journey.
Inside Out 2 maintains its predecessor’s sincerity, which is its best and most rewarding trait. Thanks to its stellar animation, some great gags, and unique twists on one of Pixar’s smartest concepts, the film should be a memory that audiences find worth keeping in their minds’ headquarters. And with any luck, it will earn enough success to assuage Pixar’s own anxieties.
Sure, there’s nothing in the film that matches the pure heartbreak of the first, when Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) disappears into nothingness. But Inside Out 2 proves that it’s ludicrous, at this point, to accuse the studio of having run out of ideas.
Much like the original film, the best thing about Inside Out 2 is just how clever it is. Almost every single thing that happens in it will have you shaking your head and wondering “How did they come up with that?”
Nine years later, here comes Inside Out 2, from a studio that seems to be focusing more on sequels and franchises than quirky original stories — and guess what? It’s adorable. Sure, much of it follows ground already trodden in the first film, but it finds that same sweet balance of tears and laughter.
Okay, Pixar, you got me. I cried and laughed within the first ten minutes of “Inside Out 2,” an adorable, heartwarming and fully up-to-the-original sequel to the beloved story of Riley and her middle school emotions. And then I cried two more times and laughed many times. Okay, maybe there might have been a little PTSD about being an adolescent and living with some, but this movie is so brimming with empathy and understanding, I think there was some healing, too.
Whereas many sequels bulk up on principal characters simply because the laws of the follow-up demand it, the script here follows the sound logic that the relatively simple core emotions of childhood would suddenly be jostling for space with a whole new set of volatile feelings and confused impulses when adolescence hits. It’s the balance of basic psychology with abstract concepts and inspired observational comedy that makes this a uniquely captivating coming-of-age tale.
Anxiety’s issues are not just for adults. The emotion’s total dominance and fear-mongering makes this a tough viewing for young kids. Some will be old enough to understand the film’s broad ideas but not old enough to get all the nuance. The result might very well be them dreading getting older. I mean, fair, but not exactly fun.
The first Inside Out featured a passing joke about a big red button on the inner console that read “Puberty,” but the second film has to actually run with and ends up laboring that bit. Pixar actually put out a good recent effort, Turning Red, about the messiness of adolescence. What stops Inside Out 2 from matching that film’s insights is its own format, which its subject matter has outgrown.
Kelsey Mann’s Inside Out 2 will arrive in theaters on June 14, 2024. Watch the trailer below.
