'Inside Out 2' briefing

2 ½ (out of 4)

            Hey Pixar, any chance of a real renaissance or resurgence at this point? Calling anything they produce from here out “the best since Soul” wouldn’t mean much even if Inside Out 2 was an exceptional sequel — it isn’t though, just another entry of entertainment entropy they've regularly released since the decline, save an exception or two.

At the end I hoped the credits-adjacent dinnertime zoom-ins ’n’ -outs of the parent’s own internal command modules would yield a great parting gag like the first Inside Out but nope, just more of “Wow isn’t anxiety annoying?” Is anxiety just a fistful of adderall and planning your day? In constructive life situations this new movie makes anxiousness look downright useful, though of course Inside Out 2’s thematic promise, like last time, is it takes the balance of ALL emotions (the good, the bad, the indifferent) to amount to a full person. This sequel feigns as new and different, aiming lower perhaps for the sake of keeping story potential alive for more sequels, but what’s the next step (OH God a Disney+ show??), what emotions could they add on top of the better additions like Ennui and especially Nostalgia as some closeted grandmotherly emotion for a rainy day, the best recurring bit. Pixar’s not going to get its hands dirty with sexual frustration and the temptations of substance abuse or some other deadly sin now are they, unless these flicks truly become message movies.

Limiting children’s human emotion to five distinctly incomplete subsets was begging for an adolescent upgrade, so long as they retained enough heartwarming, psychologically healthy ideas and proper pathos — but Inside Out 2 doesn’t just talk down to teenagers, they’re shortchanging the kids as well. The original was so original it took seven suggested scripts for any production to began — this was already a concept too high for its own good whether it wanted to be or not, and if the idea of an Inside Out is the sum of riffing and pitching small concepts within the larger umbrella of insular insanity (probably how plenty of Pixar screenplays are pieced together) is this sequel honestly the best bundle of bits you got?

For the sake of color let’s look at certain Pixar series — Toy Story is the flagship and, for me, without a weak one in the bunch, unless you count Lightyear and who does? Finding Dory was cash-grabby but has that sturdy center of sentiment and more than a few cute additions in character. Incredibles 2 was no doubt a flight of steps down from Pixar’s finest two hours but an intermittently awe-inducing follow-up. But Inside Out 2 is about as trivial as a Cars 2 (or 3, remember?) or a Monsters University, so inconsequential you don’t even need to see it, it may as well not even exist. And for puberty allegories I would honestly say both Turning Red (despite paling next to Encanto and Coco) and Brave were more agreeable, girls-will-be-girls one-of-a-kind affairs, the sequel isn’t even up to their most dismissed of COVID and post-COVID under-the-radar affairs like Luca or Elemental.

Inside Out was the OG Pixar comeback, a renewing moment for their acclaimed invention and most literal emotional complexity — this has neither, just less enlightening gags and minuscule social insight. Of course I’m not upset that the more pointed growing pains episode of this now fresh series has you squirming, teeth on edge and collar pulled, but that’s also what you got last time when young Riley was formerly out of control of herself, manipulated like a marionette by her color-coated brain-bureaucracy. If this is a rebound outside of Disney finances, it’s a sad one — for me Soul is their closest and only scrape with cinema greatness in almost 15 years. Even 2015’s Inside Out isn’t quite as exceptionally clever as they say, like when Phyllis Smith’s Sadness has to explain every stage of abstract thought just so you understand one sequence of their mind-mission. Then there’s no Bill Hader as Fear (Tony Hale ain’t no bad trade) or even Mindy Kaling as Disgust from what I can tell (Liza Lapira instead), though Lewis Black, Smith and Amy Poehler exude earnest returning voice work. Maya Hawke has attempted to make a name for herself beyond identifiable nepo-baby status through 2023’s Asteroid City and Maestro but as the voice of Anxiety (and as far as redeemed villains go), it’s no character exactly destined to be anyone’s favorite.

I just felt disheartened, as if, like the upcoming Moana 2 (formerly a show reworked into a theatrical sequel), this is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency kind of project, where it’s about nothing more than the bottom line rather actual artistry. For Dreamworks’ parallel products, Trolls Band Together and Kung Fu Panda 4 demand less of you, deliver more dutiful distractions and are better for it — Pixar, meanwhile, is constantly betrayed by their pantheon-packed past, like having your darlings kill you. Somehow Orion and the Dark (and from the looks of it The Wild Robot) is finding Dreamworks accessing slip-on sincerity and silliness better than the GOAT. Albeit, from afar Pixar's next original project, Elio, appears too promising for me to neglect the studio’s still-lingering potential for a stunner.

Especially following up Richard Kind’s heartbreaking bro for the ages Bing Bong, the second Inside Out doesn’t hit you right in the feels in any remotely comparable sense, and I rate my Pixar movies in no small part due to the tears they elicit. Regrettably, all the sentimental and psychological simplifications of Inside Out 2 may be messing with kids heads and hearts more than making sense of them, and Nostalgia will be the only reason this will ever be remembered.