Introduction
Inside Out 2 revolves around a now 14-year-old Reilly who goes to a hockey camp with her best friends. Intending to be a freshman on her high school’s varsity hockey team, she befriends the “cool kids”, leaving the friends she came with alone. She struggles with anxiety, attempting to change herself to fit in more and feel like she belongs. But in the end, she learns it’s better to be yourself, not letting anxiety get the best of you.
I had very high hopes going into the theater to see the movie. After all, the first film seemed like the perfect movie for a sequel. It would make sense that a movie about a teenage girl growing up would be continued since she obviously doesn’t stop growing after the first movie. However, as the movie finished, I was rather disappointed. It became very apparent to me that Pixar has lost the genius that it once had.
Storytelling
Inside Out is one of my favorite Pixar movies to this day. It is brilliant in its ability to create such an emotional story without taking drama to the extreme. To me, one of the most beautiful moments in the film occurs when Reilly attempts to run away from her new San Fransisco home. She has been emotionally distraught and is struggling with the change of moving. So she decides it would be best to leave and go back to her old house. However, at the last moment, Sadness takes control of the panel, and Reilly discovers that running away is not the solution. She goes back home and runs into the arms of her panicked parents. For a moment, there is no words, only the image of Reilly in her parents’ arms.
This is an extremely powerful moment in the film. It allows the audience to see how stereotypically negative emotions, such as sadness, can bring people together, and create stronger bonds/relationships than there were before. And it does this while using the least amount of words possible. I was so looking forward to seeing how the sequel could accomplish the same beautiful moments in different ways. But, to my surprise, it seemed that the sequel did not accomplish this at all. Instead of trusting that the audience would understand what the film was trying to say, and letting viewers feel the emotions that it was portraying, the film spoonfed its messaging to the audience. For example, when Joy and the others stumble across a room filled with workers making fantasies of possible disasters and sending them to Reilly for her to feel anxious, Joy basically explains that they were doing exactly that. And during the climax of the film, when Anxiety takes control of Reilly, Joy LITERALLY says “Anxiety, you need to let her go.” To me, this was painful to watch as it caused me to realize that companies such as Pixar are no longer as creative as they used to when creating their films, and have no trust in their audience. They instead have to come up with cliche ideas and then spoon-feed the themes behind them so that people will understand how “deep” and “mature” they are.
Climax
Speaking of climax, I was probably even more disappointed with the film’s emotional climax compared to the original. In the first movie, Reilly battles with change, it has arguably two climaxes: The first is a beautiful representation of the “loss of childhood innocence”, when Reilly’s imaginary friend, Bing Bong, is forgotten. The second is the previously established “running away”. Both of these moments are extremely complex and mature, discussing some of the most impactful moments of growing up. Losing childhood wonder is what truly indicates that one is maturing when one begins to see things more realistically than before. The loss of trust between child and parent creates a rift in the relationship forever, so the bonding hug they have at the end connects with anyone watching who has felt the same separation from their loved ones.
I had hoped while watching the sequel, that it would have similar mature themes that the original had, but I was mistaken. The main conflict in the movie is Anxiety. Anxiety attempts to tyrannize Reilly’s mind, which eventually leads her to abandon her close friends and hide her own identity so she can “fit in”. The main climax happens in the last 15 minutes, when Anxiety takes complete control of Reilly, and she has a panic attack. Now, don’t get me wrong, a panic attack is a horrible experience that almost everybody has to go through. But for a climax, it is nowhere near the brilliance of the first. Mature topics like childhood innocence can not be fairly compared to the idea of a panic attack. And although the portrayal of it was one of the most realistic in modern media, that doesn’t excuse the fact that it seems like a copout. Instead of having a genuine, intelligent, creative climax, they settled for the idea of a panic attack, which does not meet my standard.
In comparing it to another movie, which happens to be one of my favorite animated movies, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, we can see how a panic attack can be an emotional moment, but at the same time be used as a point of rising action. The film revolves around Puss, who is a cat on his last of the “nine lives”. He is constantly facing the fear of death, which at one point causes him to have a panic attack. The scene is extremely powerful and causes the audience to feel almost the same way Puss does. We see how horribly his anxiety is treating him, and it is used as one of the main conflicts of the film. However, the climax is much more powerful. He ends up confronting death itself, therefore confronting the very thing that had been causing him such anxiety. This makes for a much more compelling story, with a much stronger resolution. If Inside Out 2 had attempted to delve more into the idea of anxiety, where it comes from, how it can be solved, etc. it could have been a much more powerful film.
Conclusion
There are other minor gripes I have with the movie, such as the way both climaxes were solved almost the exact same way, (First Joy looks through memories and realizes her mistake, then they hug and it all gets better.) Or how the dynamics between the characters were not nearly as strong as they were in the first movie. But there are also some things I really enjoyed. The humor in this film was really strong, I found myself laughing out loud much more than I do in most movies. And I never got bored while watching it, I was invested in the story the entire time.
All in all, I don’t think this movie is really “bad” per se. It has the same feeling as Turing Red to me, where I was entertained, but didn’t feel any strong connection or emotions towards it. I think Inside Out 2 is fun, and it makes for a great family movie. But when comparing it to the mastery of the first movie, it falls short. That does not make it any less of a good movie, just less of a good sequel.
