• Release year: 2024
• Director: Kelsey Mann.
• Producer: Mark Nielsen.
• Screenplay by: Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein.
• Cinematography by: Adam Habib and Jonathan Pytko.
• Music by: Andrea Datzman.

Shotgun Commentary: if you are thinking about watching this, you probably have watched the first instalment. This is exactly the same, only with more emotions and less humour.

Review

Inside Out 2 is the logical continuation of Inside Out, where Riley was a kid navigating her emotions, she’s now a pre-teen facing the hormonal rollercoaster that this next phase of her life brings. The concept is good and the delivery quite solid. However, it is overall not very original since the plot is pretty much the same as the one in the first instalment, only with different emotions at play.

Round and round we go

First things first, if you liked Inside Out, chances are, you’re gonna like this sequel too. Regrettably, if, by any chance, you are a spectator who values innovation in the content you watch, you… might not be as thrilled with this. Remember how, in the first film, Joy learns that all emotions are necessary for Riley to be a well regulated person? Well, apparently that lasted for about three seconds before she decided to start making Riley forget any unsavoury memory she ever had, leaving only space for… Joy? Again?

Of course, this leads to a whole journey in which Joy, along with other emotion sidekicks, runs around Riley’s mind in order to fix an issue. Only to later realise that she has been going about it all wrong because the root of the problem had always been her behaviour. Sound familiar?

Luckily, not everything is a blatant copy of the first film. In this instalment, we meet some new emotions: anxiety, boredom, embarrassment, envy and nostalgia. Anxiety hoards all the protagonism, turning the film from a fun adventure for kids into a perfect weapon of emotional destruction for adults. So… pretty much another Pixar movie, really.

Trendy issues

Anxiety is the emotional equivalent of Bridgerton (2020-present) or Zendaya, all the cool kids think they know what it is and love to talk about it. Nevertheless, while mental health is a crucial theme that has been ignored for far too long, one can’t help but feel like Pixar has gone directly to the root of adult trauma, bypassing any sort of nuance or metaphor in favour of punching their audience directly in the face with their unsolved emotions. Honestly, nothing but respect for that course of action.

The big guns

Still, Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) are the unsung successes of the film. While they are spending a lot less time on screen, their actions are relatable and the characters themselves are incredibly charming. Both of them provoke a layer of empathetic response from the audience that enhances the story and the viewing experience.

As for Envy (Ayo Edebiri), its whole existence seems like an afterthought. It’s horribly represented and brings absolutely nothing to the narrative, she could have been easily eliminated in favour of Nostalgia (June Squibb), which leads us to yet another elephant in the room. Is nobody going to acknowledge the fact that you DO get nostalgia when you are in your teenage years? You don’t need to be thirty to miss past times, you can do that from a very early age. These two characters are so out of sorts that they make you wonder whether they should have spent less time on Anxiety in favour of thinking a bit more about the development of the other new additions.

All in all, Inside Out 2 is a decent watch that will make kids sit down for about two hours. Despite the terrible decision of changing voice actors like no one is going to notice, the story is made somewhat interesting by the new characters, even though nothing of substance actually happens. There is a lot less humour in this instalment, but it hit a lot harder in the feels.

Advice to take from this movie:

• Don’t let anxiety rule your life.
• You can make new friends without kicking the old ones to the curb.
• Envy is useless and nostalgia is nice, but only from time to time.

What’s your take? Have you watched Inside Out 2? Did you find any differences between the first instalment and this one?

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