PG. If you are looking for one thing that will be an interesting discussion to have with your kid, it's going to be explaining puberty. Guys, we should be talking about puberty anyway, but Inside Out 2 might be the movie (or, may I suggest, Turning Red?) that forces that conversation to the forefront. But if this is a parent's guide to whether a movie is right for a family member, just remember that Pixar is really good at making us scared about the everyday coupled with making us cry a lot. There's stuff in the movie that is just scary, even though it might be hard to define why. PG.
DIRECTOR: Kelsey Mann Guys, you need to stop hyping me up for movies. I get such unreasonable expectations for movies that no movie can possibly live up to the expectations that I have for the film. Honestly, if the first movie didn't exist, this might be one of my favorite Pixar movies. But because the first one exists and I think that this one isn't as original as the first film, I honestly only have "meh" reviews for it. I acknowledge the following: "Just because a movie isn't as good as its predecessor, doesn't make it bad." So if you find me griping, just know that I liked it. Part of it is that I wanted this to be an unabashed exploration of puberty. I'm going to say, the first movie really teased that these were Riley's first steps into puberty. The movie ends with a "Puberty" button on the console. The trailers for Inside Out 2 show the Puberty button going off and Riley's brain getting wrecked. But really, that was all a device to get Anxiety to become the antagonist of the piece. I don't mind a movie that explores Anxiety as a concept. Heck, having Riley being a representative of teenage girls dealing with anxiety is also kind of brilliant. But I was promised this big, complex look at what it meant to be a teenage girl and I feel like we only got one facet. Don't get me wrong. It's a huge facet. It's a facet for every person. Note that I'm already backpedaling, thinking that my life will be ruined if I don't handle this with kid gloves. But this is a movie about anxiety and that's fine. I just found the movie to be hyperfocused instead of tackling all of the things going on. My frustration is that there is a pantheon of other emotions that have been introduced in the movie and they are wildly underrepresented. (I suppose the same could be said about the other emotions from the first film. Joy and Sadness are the MVPs. The other emotions are often used for comic effect.) But with the OG emotions from the first film, these characters are well-developed and stay true to their purposes within the film. With these new characters, particularly Envy, they often seem like minions as opposed to fully realized characters. Anxiety is the big bad. She's a dominant force. I'm very cool with that. But when you have that strong of a character, they can't just talk to themselves the entire time. So Envy, who is supposed to be the avatar of jealousy and greed, just echoes Anxiety. Envy isn't copying people. It's wanting what they have. And the thing is, we're huge The Bear fans. Ayo Edebiri is one of the best actresses out there. I wanted her to have this nuance and character and she's just this sounding board for Maya Hawke's Anxiety. That's not fair. But the bigger problem (again, I liked the movie) is that this very much feels like a sequel. Often, the task of a sequel is to bring people back into this world again. But the movie just can't be a carbon copy of the first film. It's this tightrope walk where you have to bring back the nostalgia of the first film (hey, there's Nostalgia!) and offer something new. I don't know how much new was brought into this film. The first film had Joy and Sadness booted out of the control room and having traverse the facets of Riley so that she could experience those emotions again. Because this is the sequel, they needed to up the same concept, so all of the emotions from the first film must now traverse Riley's personality to ensure that she can feel those emotions. There's some problems with that. The first movie established that emotions are complex. Often, we can have happy / sad memories at the same time. When someone is dealing with anxiety, they're often dealing with other emotions as well. If anything, we feel them more intensely. (Hence the console being hyper-sensitive to touch.) But if Anxiety locks up Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger, is Riley no longer feeling those things? While Anxiety can feel like a color of Fear (and that is discussed), Riley often finds herself angry at other characters. For the sake of sequelizing a concept, the story makes...less sense? This feels like I'm being incredibly picky, but the first movie does such a good job of explaining the complexities of the pre-teen mind that moments like this takes me out of the film. It was so well figured out in the first movie and this feels like we have to shut down part of what made the first one so well made to make this movie work. Now to undo everything I said. Inside Out 2 is actually a pretty great film. From a completely visceral place, Inside Out 2 mostly works. The jokes are great. I'm genuinely invested in Riley's journey at hockey camp. I kind of love that we don't have the insane stakes of the first film. The first film threatened to make Riley a homeless preteen. This movie makes us believe that not making the hockey team might be the worst thing that can happen to a person. Really, it imbues what is just a moment in time with such gravitas that we care for this character in the same way that the emotions really care for Riley. And I kind of love that the Inside Out movies are better advocates for mental health and care than anything else that I've seen. Anxiety is this compelling bad guy. Again, the best villains are ones that think that they're the heroes of the film. Inside Out 2 colors Joy as a flawed protagonist again. Let's talk about that for a second. Many sequels retcon the first movie and have the protagonist forget all of the lessons from the first film. Immediately in this film, Joy has grown as a character. Joy and Sadness are the best of friends. She's not blind to the fact that Sadness is kind of a mess. But Joy is working to better herself. But she's making all new mistakes. Do you understand how much of a pleasure it is to see a movie where the protagonist makes all new, yet logical, mistakes? Also, the hero's journey to defeat the villain is what illuminates the mistakes that the hero has been making. The best part? While Anxiety's issues mirror Joy's, it isn't a one-to-one thing. Instead, we see the maturity that Joy has experienced allows her to approach the issue from a different perspective. That's pretty cool. I wish this was a slam dunk. It's not fair that I have to come to a movie demanding a slam dunk. Instead, we get a very good sequel that runs into some sequel problems. I don't know why people are losing their minds over this one. My guess is that it handles the concept of anxiety extremely well, but doesn't really touch on the nuance of everything else introduced. Still, it's worth a watch. If I've done anything, I hope I've tempered expectations so you can just watch a very good movie instead of expecting a life-changing experience. |
Film is great. It can challenge us. It can entertain us. It can puzzle us. It can awaken us.
AuthorMr. H has watched an upsetting amount of movies. They bring him a level of joy that few things have achieved. Archives
October 2024
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