I found the overall package of Inside Out 2 enjoyable, with Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Joy (Amy Poehler) as captivating and cartoonishly real in the sequel as they were in the original. It’s a new entry worthy of the title, despite enough material here to expand on over the course of multiple movies.
Riley’s turmoil at a hockey camp coincides with the demolition of headquarters inside her mind in Inside Out 2, and the arrival of new emotions causes drastic changes for everyone involved. Pixar’s newest sequel encounters its ups and downs the same way its characters do, with an overall positive result that still hits a few bumps in the road along the way.
And this is largely because telling a story about emotions – and by emotions – gets overshadowed by cheeky worldbuilding and unnecessarily repetitive personifications of concepts. For every “brainstorm” and stream of consciousness, Inside Out 2 loses its focus. It’s trying to fit a hat on top of a hat on top of a (….). It becomes too much to juggle after a certain point, all while trying to tell a cohesive and thoughtful story of transitioning from the innocent mind of a child to the harsh realities of adolescence.
In turn, it feels that the new aspects of Inside Out 2 that deserve to be developed out never do. Anxiety (wonderfully voiced by Maya Hawke) is sporadic and reactive in many specific moments, but Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui never get that same attention. The writers tell a contained story over the course of one pivotal hockey camp for Riley (Kensington Tallman), but have to cram nearly a dozen consequential inflection points over those few days to lend any time to the other emotions.
And yet I still found the overall package enjoyable, with Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Joy (Amy Poehler) as captivating and cartoonishly real in Inside Out 2 as they were in the original. It’s a sequel worthy of the title, despite enough material here to expand on over the course of multiple movies.
Luckily enough, the financial success of the movie (the second highest-grossing opening weekend for an animated movie) almost already guarantees a third film in the franchise. But just because Inside Out 3 will almost certainly happen doesn’t mean they have to introduce another bunch of characters and concepts, because it’s already teetering on being too much.
Rating: 6/10
- Cast: Kensington Tallman, Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Liza Lapira, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan
- Director: Kelsey Mann
- Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family
- Runtime: 96 minutes
- Rated: PG
- Release Date: June 14, 2024
- Read about Inside Out 2 (2024) on Wikipedia and IMDb
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Pixar has produced the following animated movies:
