Inside Out 2 is another cute exploration of the mind of a young girl — now 13 years old (I think?). With her emotions personified as different characters operating the control centre of her mind, managing her memories and sense of self — unsurprisingly like the first one. If you weren’t interested in the first movie this has nothing extra to entice you, but if you liked the first one you’ll like this too. 7/10
Colourful, fun world, great animation, a bit of humour but I would have liked more. Could have even used a bit more run time to allow more interactions between the expanded cast of characters in both the physical and mental worlds.
There is 1 start of credit scene & 1 post credit scene. Both are good and cap off the movie. Though I’m not a fan of making people wait thru the whole credits — since we as the first showing of the day didn’t know there was one and most people left already and missed it.
Watched Friday 14th July 2024, 12:00 midday public showing
The emotions of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust are back, and new emotions Anxiety, Ennui (boredom?), Shame and Envy are in. With another knocking at the door (but that’s a joke so we’ll save that for your viewing).
If you know anything about early teens (do you remember being one?) the situations are pretty authentic to that period of life — changing moods, more complex emotions, changing life situations, friendships groups and interests with rising expectations of what one should be achieving. Along with the frustration (and Anxiety) of trying to manage all that.
With the split focus the ‘outer world’ story is necessarily short. Which leaves lots and lots situations and emotions completely untapped. Unlike other one-off-movie-turned-franchises, there is legitimate potential for fun and varied sequels here which I’m tentatively on-board for if the quality is maintained (but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…)
The negative is that it could have been a bit more… bolder, funnier, more creative. There were a couple of cartoon and game characters hanging out in Riley’s mind that I thought were very funny and could have been used more for example. That’s why it’s only a 7 and not higher.
I almost felt surprised at getting a decent movie out of Disney Pixar — after a long run of many projects I wasn’t a fan of — and initially considered giving it an even higher mark. On reflection a day later I settled on a seven. The emotions are there but not as strong as some of their best work.
As I said, fans can safely come back but I don’t think there is enough here for growing the audience.
Until the next movie!
-R
