Riot’s Reviews: Inside Out 2
What if feelings had feelings? (lol) Returning readers will remember the joke and they will also remember that Riot’s got a bit of a…strained relationship with Disney and or Pixar. I wouldn’t go so far as to get hung up on all the cultural/ideological arguments that other reviewers do, but I’d contend it’s commonly known that Disney is more divisive than it ever has been. I’ve particularly been put off by sub-optimal writing combined with a focus on messaging that’s beginning to leave the kids, what should be the target audience, behind. Disney/Pixar I think has been, as those left behind kids might call it these days, mid. Currently, they’ve been a bit embroiled in “controversies” surrounding Star Wars: The Acolyte, a subject I do not care to get involved in and it is content I do not care to watch. With all that mess going on, I was curious to see what kind of product Inside Out 2 was going to prove to be and how the box office would handle itself in the middle of such tumultuous seas. So, how did ol’ Riot feel about Inside Out 2?
Bravo Disney/Pixar, y’all really returned to form. Inside Out 2 was a brilliant, emotional, and truly lovely film. There’s always a certain level of danger when a studio makes a follow up to a well-written and popular original IP. The first film was a masterpiece in the way it approached the intricacies of human consciousness, emotion, and memory. Having Riley’s (Kensington Tallman) inner feelings be represented by clever and brightly designed caricatures brought a lot of levity to a film that dealt with the complexities of human emotion and decision making. And like a group of writers/producers that know and respect the original content (as they should) IO2 kept on that thread, using all of the humor, silliness, and quirkiness that made the first film so palatable. Similar to the first, this movie came out strong with its vocal talent, even if all of the original cast wasn’t able to return. Tony Hale (Fear) and Liza Lapira (Disgust) were appropriately able to fill the big shoes left by Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling. Riley’s four new, puberty induced emotions, Envy (Ayo Edibiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and Anxiety (Maya Hawke) were all great in their own rights, with Hawke putting together one of the best feats of voice acting I’ve seen in a while.
I’ve never really taken issue with Disney/Pixar’s ability to beautifully animate a film and IO2 is no exception. The animation is once again stunning, particularly its depiction of the belief system, the stream of consciousness, and the cascading wave of suppressed memory (globes?) that sweep our heroes around toward the end of the story. Original and new character design was on point again and it was fun to explore the ways Riley’s brain had shifted in the years separating her younger self and her new teen identity. I think one of the eternal markers of a good kids movie is getting to hear the actual child audience belly laugh at scenes throughout. As much as they made me cringe at times, newcomers Bloofy (Ron Funches) and Pouchy (James Austin Johnson) really had the kids rolling in their seats and I couldn’t help but guffaw openly at just about anything Embarrassment was involved in and the multiple quick cameos of Nostalgia (June Squibb). Riley’s vault of secrets contained some of the best laughs I’ve had in a Disney/Pixar movie in a long time.
What inevitably becomes the biggest selling point of IO2 and arguably its biggest flaw is everything involving its new character, Anxiety. Pros: this movie dethroned Puss and Boots: The Last Wish for best depiction of what anxiety and a panic attack does to people and the inner representation hits the nail on the head so well the damn thing nearly blows through the wall. Anxiety’s obsessive control and inability to do anything without a laundry list of contingencies is literally what the emotion is all about. When Riley’s belief system is fully taken over by Anxiety/anxious thoughts the all-encompassing message of “I’m not good enough” is very much the foreseeable conclusion of those thoughts. Visually, the image of Anxiety working so hard and so fast that she’s actually not moving at all and frozen in place, wide-eyed and panicked to the point of tears, is about as real as it can be.
So what’s the problem here? Nothing inherently. It’s a highly emotional film that’s literally about emotions. But, it can easily be argued that it’s damn near too emotional. Anxiety is a crippling feeling for a lot of people and is something that is well spread throughout the world’s population. Do we need to be going that hard for a kids movie? I don’t have the answer to that. But I can certainly imagine the viewing experience will be altered in a negative way for a lot of adults and will maybe either go over the head of youngsters at best and trigger too strong of an emotional response at worst. On a separate but related note (and the first movie was guilty of this as well), I don’t agree with the idea that Riley is being depicted as sort of a puppet to her emotions, limiting the agency that she has over the little characters in her head that are jockeying for control of the girl. Projecting to the masses that we are slaves to our emotions is just a bad idea at its core.
Both films had plenty of wholesome messaging to combat this. In the first, it was about how love and family can combat the insecurities of change. IO2 stayed on a similar thread and taught a lot of great lessons about responsibility, friendship, responding to peer pressure, and being okay with all the new feelings that come with even more change, mainly puberty lol. Were the scales tipped a little too far into the overblown emotions and the reactions to them? Sure. But I thought there was enough quality and important lessons to balance things out. Long story short (too late), Inside Out 2 was one of the top three times I’ve had in the theater since I started this little venture and I think y’all will feel the same.
Riot’s Rating: 9.6/10: I docked it .1 points for the anxiety/panic attacks it induced in myself and everyone I’ve talked to about it and .3 points for the bad hockey. I’m always happy to see more hockey in film, but if you’re going to spend that much time researching the human brain/emotions, you could spend a little more effort on the hockey, people.
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