Movie Review: Inside Out 2

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

For many years, I always like to watching Pixar films from childhood to grown adult, they’ve given us some of the most fascinating to a best movies out there for its imaginative ideas and their challenging aspects since they first opened 1986 after they used to be Lucasfilms’ Graphic Group, but long story from its origin. However, as time went on today, Pixar is no longer the same as where they used to, due to the effect from the pandemic in 2020, with the combination of delays or migrating to Disney+ and box-office bombs, Pixar started to losing millions of dollars and laying off their employees that, as im writing this, they’re now more than twelve hundred employees, which it grew to concerning me if Pixar is about to losing their theatrical movies to forcing to putting them into Disney+, while also stop making shorts on streaming platforms, so it seemed that they’re going to try again to giving us yet another sequel, but a sequel of one of my favorite movie back in 2015.

“Inside Out 2” is a 2024 Pixar’s coming-of-age animated film that was written/directed by Kelsey Mann, produced by Mark Nielsen, and co-written by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein.

After the release of the first Inside Out that it was both well-received and made a lot of money at the box-office, many people believe that with the success, this maybe worth to have a sequel (aside non-canon sequel from a toy-to-life game Disney Infinity), this got the intention announcement for Pete Doctor that, at Academy Awards ceremony in 2016, he unveiled that yes, they’ll make a sequel out of Inside Out, however, after John Lasseter’s self-desctruction from his misconduct, it seems that Pete Doctor, aside of credited as the executive producer, won’t coming back as both writer and director, due currently working as a Chief Creative Officer at Pixar (the last time he ever wrote and direct was Soul, maybe il review that in my future review), meaning he’s gotta pass his sequel project to Kelsey Mann as a co-writer and directorial debut (Fun Fact, before work on Pixar, he used to work on Cartoon Network with great shows, including his creation as a director, Megas XLR). Aside of long working for new story, as well as planning to creating new emotions (which probably made Joy getting overwhelmed), as I said before, I was concerned for Pixar’s fate from their losing money and employees, which I considered it as a possibly redemption, since I love Inside Out last decade ago, if this one is a success, then Pixar will continue making theatrical animated movies, if not, then Pixar is forced to migrating their movies in Disney+, lets cross our fingers for their redemption.

So, with all that said, will Joy and her pals gotta cooperate with new emotions for Riley’s new age, or having new emotions will be too much to baring in her mind?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

Since this is the new age for Riley, you think the story will producing something new stuff and new challenges? Well, it has, but maybe if it needs to add a bit new for some.

Taking place two years after recovering a brief depression from run away to staying with Riley’s parents in San Francisco, Riley (now grew to 13 year old, the beginning of teenage era) is ready to heading on high school for building up her hockey career and hanging out with her best buds Grace and Bree, thanks to the help with the control of emotions with our old friends Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. Not only them, but they also have an upgrade of Riley’s mind call “Sense of Self”, which us the memory core for Riley’s important personality. However, despite Riley is picked up to the hockey camp for qualifying her performance to the team’s school, our emotional fellas are receiving a red alert for being a teen… PUBERTY…! Not only they got themselves an upgrade on their headquarter from the mind workers, but they also gotta meet a new emotions, Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment. While they seems to be welcoming, but its gonna be a struggling start not just the OG emotions and new ones get along, but Joy needs to protecting her important “Good Person” in Sense of Self, but Anxiety, despite being a fan of Joy, she wants to be a new in control to pushing Joy away for both winning a hockey qualifying and getting a new friend since her two friends are about to moving away that could straining them away like ghosting. This resulting while Joy trying to protecting Riley’s control with Sense of Self, Anxiety dumps Joy, her original emotions and sense of Good Person out of headquarter for her full control with new ones, which that’ll causing a negative effect on Riley’s new sense of personality, its up to Joy and her main emotions to not only retrieving the main Sense of Self in order to get back without causing Riley losing herself.

I find the story of this movie is good, even if its kinda done before with the aforementioned similar to both the first Inside Out and Turning Red, since this about the journey to retrieving one piece to get back to the headquarter and the beginning of Teenage life with Puberty to introducing new emotions that could be a struggling challenge of changing. Its an easy noticeable parts when I watched it, BUT, even though the movie copied from the previous Pixar movies, but the execution is actually nice for the message, its mainly how not to pushing away a gentle boss like Joy away, if you’re taking your fandom too much to ruining who Riley is, otherwise, without the direction order to protecting Riley, that could cause a HUGE RISK of mental breakdown from panic attack. That’s an important lesson how not to treating your role model too much that otherwise, you could ended up becoming took-over control freak like Anxiety, which it will concerning both Joy with OG emotions and Riley’s friends to losing her self conscious for who Riley is. In other words, the movie’s execution has a nice message for how not to double crossing the original emotions by throwing out with replacement, cause otherwise, that will make a negative result before it becomes a big disaster, its always gotta learn before trying to taking over, even for growing teenage to have promising to difficulty path, let along being a hardcore fan that could lead you into a control freak, you gotta be humble and respect when you’re new. If there’s an issue about this movie is there’s a subplot when despite Grace and Bree about to moving away into a different high school after the camp, Riley meets a new and much professional one name Val Ortiz, while its somewhat nice to having new friend and probably hurting her previous friends for ghosting, which is one of the aspect when the new emotions brought in, but while I understood about this, but this new human friend is kinda pointless from the main plot. As for the humor of this movie, well, its actually quite enjoyably funny with a chuckle for either the gimmick of the characters or maybe even the delivery from the writing or voice acting.

While it maybe unoriginal that it felt like they borrowed their own movies, but at least they have a nice execution about the message, the jokes or even some new plot about the rollercoaster ride for how to controlling a teenager’s mind.

The Animation

The movie’s budget costs $200M, the presentation of the movie is… Looks much like before, but with some updates.

For started the background design in Riley’s mind is pretty much an update since we saw the ending of the first movie, with wider control that our main emotions can make a mixed emotional memories, which is nice to see the update where we left off. While the core memories are also been update to stick together, sure outside of headquarter, we do get to see more like bellow the headquarter, there’s whenever Joy or Anxiety places in the river of Sense of Self, it creates a string to creating the core of sense. While the rest outside is the same with imaginary land though sadly less focus compare to the previous Inside Out and the vault scene is only shown once. Meanwhile the real world background are surprisingly pretty good with a high and bright quality.

As for the quality, like I said, the quality in real world looks pretty good for improvement, while the mind world is pretty much the same, but with, again, new location, but it does add new colors based on introduction of emotions. Though I can see the body textures of emotions are surprisingly look nice.

As for the animation and the design, again, they remains the same as we all know with the main emotions, minus Riley due to her aging as a teenager, the mind workers are the same like walking gummy candies. As for the new emotion designs, I find them look fascinating to make something new, more colorful and even stylish like something straight out of 90’s cartoons in form of CG, not bad for what they’re going for. Speaking of style, im very surprise that they went to do a new quality animation from Bloofy and Pouchy appearing in 2D animation to looking like something straight out of Nick Jr. cartoons and Lance Slashblade appearing in Playstation 1 graphic looking like Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7. Nice touch for going into different style references. And for animation, its standard from normal moves almost like real humans or even going in fast pace cartoony style for some, of course there’s some action scenes from playing hockey or mind world’s obstacles are pretty cool too.

While the presentation remains the same from before, but it does have an improvement from the quality, some update designs, some new ones and even a fun references.

The Characters

While some characters remains the same, but some do have an update from the change and new ones. However, while some have a welcome return, but some have an unfortunate change.

Lets start off to reuniting our old friend Joy (reprised by Amy Poehler), she’s the main happy-go-lucky emotion for taking good care at Riley to remaining positive. In this movie, while she likes to keeping the Sense of Self safe, but this already made her overwhelmed once after Puberty Alert kicked in with updates and even new emotions, especially with the latter when she first meets Anxiety. But once she’s out of headquarter again, she’s unfortunately going on a journey with Anger, Disgust and Fear (minus Sadness, which its brief, but we’ll get there later), this leading her to be perfectly clear for the journey to overwhelming when being called “Delusional”, it made her snapped, Clark Griswold Style. Despite of struggle of obstacles, at least she’s still a fun character with the welcome return of Poehler.

Next up is Sadness (reprised by Phyllis Smith), she’s a gloomy and somewhat friendly to our emotions, especially with Joy since the first one, but still in blue. Even though she’s unfortunately didn’t get a chance to going to the journey to helping Joy, but more like going back to the headquarter in secret to find the way to get back in control, despite it could be uneasy to get through. Despite being in blue mood, she does has some moment of chuckle, and Smith, like Amy, did a fun work for her return.

After that, we have Anger (reprised by Lewis Black), a red raging fella that he can be burst of fire for being a ticking time bomb. In this movie, its quite nice to see him being Joy’s sidekick while they’re outside of headquarter, probably taking over Sadness after the previous film. Though he may have to giving a plot development for something isn’t going on their way or even his humor, and like two previous characters, Lewis did a fun work of his role too.

And lastly and I saved for the last two, as both Disgust and Fear (now voiced by Liza Lapira and Tony Hale), these guys are remained the same, ranging from Disgust being pretty and look at something to be… Well, disgust, while Fear is just a scaredy cat with some okay humor. While il give them a pass, but one draw back that I have is that their voices are mixed to me, mainly due to the replacement if they’re either doing fine, but some didn’t catch on compare to either Mindy Kaling and Bill Hader. While Liza did fine as Disgust, maybe nicely fit in, but Tony Hale’s fear, im rather iffy, while he did a fun work, but its just that he just didn’t have a humorous delivery as Tony did. As far as im concerned what I found out, the reason why Kaling and Hader won’t reprising their roles, is all because of money dispute for the offer of $100K, which is about 2% of Joy’s salary, that’s a “yikes” when this movie have a big budget, but not able to give them a second for unfairly cheap offer compare to Poehler…

As for the new emotions? Well, they’re surprisingly good that I can say.

First is Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke), a new, a fan of Joy and anxious emotion for being a newcomer for controlling Riley, as I said before, while the movie may gives a thought provoking about how we growing up with new era and bad news with puberty, Anxiety takes a full control that rather than cooperating with Joy, she ends up going step further to becoming a control freak on Riley’s mind, losing Riley’s sense for who she is since couple years ago. That’s one thing that we may have risk to get used to it, its having Anxiety that we ended losing ourselves because of that, even for autistic person like me, that could be a challenge for communication that, again, if its too much, Anxiety hits you hard before we wanna clearing both our names and minds, which is something how Anxiety does in a movie that affected Riley’s mentally that to making her look good, but losing herself if the confident is just too much that she’s not that good. I think its no secret that she’s almost like a main villain who’s like a fan of our main hero to trying to be the new boss to pushing Joy away to make Riley loses herself, which I think did pretty good how, much like in a movie, we’re struggling who we are from Anxiety when we’re growing up. You know when people are always like “Life imitates art”, but sometimes with this movie with Anxiety introduced, its the equivalent of “Art imitates life”. But of course, Hawke did a great job for portraying a stressful and energetic emotional performance.

Next, there’s Envy (voiced by Ayo Edebiri), a small envious emotion that while she looks cute, but could be mixed when ever she see something, kinda like disgust, but opposite. Even though she’s more of a second-in-command with Anxiety, though not as harmful than Anxiety does, but at least Ayo did both fun and cute performance.

Then there’s Ennui (voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos), a gothic-like moody bored emotion with her French accent, not because of Adele herself, but with the name Ennui. Even though she’s not much to do for just a humor in her moody and boredom gimmick, il give her a pass, even if she may look like a Gen Z due to holding her phone to controlling the mind like Bluetooth, but to be fair, at least she’s not as obnoxious then Gen Z, and il give a credit for Adele’s performance for both fun and promising voice, even if she’s French with her successful French movies.

And there’s Embarrassment (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser), who despite he looks like a gentle giant, but more of embarrassing feeling for Riley’s control, which he’s more like a mix between Fear and Sadness and that’s it, I understand for that, but again, maybe they could give him a new character development, im just saying. But il give a credit for Hauser did a nice work for being embarrassing fella.

As for the rest in this movie, they’re there for either a plot or some humors, either them or necessary. There’s Riley Anderson (now voiced by Kensington Tallman after replacing Kaitlyn Dias) who’s the main girl (now as teenager with the age of 13) who’s controlled by our emotions that she’s either wanna be relevant to be happy or losing herself for all about being good as hockey in anxiety problem, her Anderson parents (reprised by both Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) who are the parents that they showing up for supporting their daughter for her successful dream for her graduation in hockey, Valentina “Val” Ortiz (voiced by Lilimar) who’s a tough and popular hockey player that Riley caught attention to her, Bree and Grace (voiced by Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green and Grace Lu) who are Riley’s old friends that they’re unfortunately being ghosted from either Riley’s changing friendship to their moving to new school, Coach Roberts (voiced by Yvette Nicole Brown) is a hockey coach and the head of hockey camp for teaching students for building up their hockey career seriously, Bloofy and Pouchy (voiced by Ron Funches and James Austin Johnson) are a 2D cartoon and his trusty living pouch who are Riley’s childhood favorite character in education show, Lance Slashblade (voiced by Yong Yea) is Cloud look-a-like when Riley had a childhood crush on him while playing video game, and Nostalgia (voiced by June Squibb) is an elder emotion who likes to sharing the past, despite she only shown up in a brief appearance (Aw man, I wanna see her more…!).

While some characters are either remain the same or voice changed for wrong reason, but at least the characters are nice to be back, along with the new ones are also good, along with voice acting are pretty good and fun to listen.

And now for my Final Opinion of this film.

Overall, Inside Out 2 is easily not only a welcome return of our favorite emotions, but its also, probably, Pixar’s great film in this year.

Sure, the movie has problems like recycling the same plot as the first one with a different execution what’s all about, it has a pretty nice message how the movie imitates our past lives, the animation is still looking good, even if it looks the same, but still looking good, the characters are nice to be back and giving us new, the voice acting are fun, and the humors are enjoyable.

Sure, while I love the first one, this second one is fun too, despite the problems im pointing at, which, even if I like it too, but I considered it as not as perfect as the first one. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both great, even if they have difference how they turned out for the execution. Even with the flaws, but I like this movie along with the first one nearly 10 years ago. Again, not a perfect sequel, but its still good. This is no stranger to be a must-watch film if you love Inside Out. But even if you haven’t seen the first one, maybe you can enjoy it as well. I’d say give your friends and family together to watch this movie and im sure you’ll enjoy it.

While the first Inside Out that one a Perfect 10, as for this sequel, im probably gonna give this one a 9/10, along earning Trophy of Success. Its definitely Pixar’s comeback, and im writing this, this movie has a best opening weekend at their box-office, meaning Pixar will stay relevant to make another movies on a big screen.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.