REVIEW: 'Inside Out 2' is insightful but predictable, best for young teens

Santos

Despite being dragged along by the coattails of its predecessor’s success, Inside Out 2 is still a worthwhile watch.

The original succeeded in its world-building and creative ability to create a physical representation of Riley’s psyche, with the emotions at Headquarters commandeering Riley’s responses to a new home, school and city.

Riley’s mind was certainly a large-scale operation, with only five emotions overseeing the organization of core memories and the management of her islands of personality, which signify personality traits.

The plot of the first movie followed Joy and Sadness’s journey through Riley’s mind scape, from Headquarters to The Train of Thought, Imagination Land, and the dreadful Memory Dump where the loss of Bing Bong the elephant brought many to tears.

Inside Out 2 successfully expands on the vast landscape of Riley’s psyche as an alarm sounds, signaling Riley’s transition into puberty and adolescence. While not too drastic, changes to that terrain are certainly relatable like the emergence of Friend Island as so big that Family Island is barely noticeable behind it.

The screeching alarm of puberty ushered in more complex emotions into headquarters like Ennui (Boredom), Embarrassment, Envy and the main antagonist of the film, Anxiety. Following the same formula as the first movie, Inside Out 2’s main conflict comes from disagreements between our old cast of emotions and new ones regarding how to guide Riley.

Riley, who in the last film was 11 years old, is now on the cusp of entering high school with her two best friends at her side. The three are approached at their Jr. League hockey game by a high school coach inviting them to a week-long training camp.

On the way there, Riley learns her best friends won’t be attending the same high school. She realizes she will have to adjust to a new school and make new friends. To her, and the new cast of emotions headed by Anxiety, the quality of Riley’s high school social life is all dependent on this training camp.

With more complex emotions taking the forefront of operations at Headquarters, we see new structures and changes to the inner workings of Riley, as sar-chasms tear through Islands of Personality and repressed emotions like Joy, Fear, Disgust, Anger and Sadness are forced to travel to the back of the mind in search for Riley’s lost Sense of Self which hinge’s on her pivotal belief, “I’m a good person.”

With old emotions absent at Headquarters, Anxiety takes over, fueling Riley’s daily actions with stress and the belief that she’s not good enough.

Inside Out 2, while hitting similar themes and plot points as the original, remains an insightful and important film. Where more mature audiences could label the sequel as unimpactful and predictable, I imagine the movie’s intended audience of adolescents would disagree.

It is a bright and clever animated movie that can be considered educational for young people dealing with complex new emotions for the first time.

Personally, the film reminded me of a younger, more insecure version of me. A version of me that occasionally found anxiety overwhelming and detrimental to the point of paralysis.

With heavy themes of self-discovery and identity, the audience is forced to look inwards, reflect on their own beliefs and determine how they let their feelings lead their behavior.

Gutwein

Coming from the perspective of somebody who likes psychology, and thought the first film adaptation was an original classic, I was disappointed with Inside Out 2.

Although at some points it was heartwarming, it was a highly predictable storyline that didn’t achieve much. The story focuses around the protagonist’s time at hockey camp, which has some positive messages about working hard, but fails to capture the full essence of discovering who you are.

I think the additions of anxiety, embarrassment, and envy proved to be the disrupters of the film, but I wasn’t totally satisfied with the development of the original emotions, and the journey this film had them take.

Working with the criteria of the first film, I didn’t think the sequel went deep enough into the complexity of true human emotions as it could’ve. Going outside the hockey camp could have allowed the film to say something larger about modern adolescence, and at some points the protagonist just felt awkward.

I do realize this film is primarily for the youth, which I am no longer a part of, and the lessons learned in the film might be more relatable to young people, rather than a 20-year-old male.

That Rotten Tomatoes has this film rated at 92% fresh is a shame, because there was nothing outstanding about this film.

Millions of people will spend money on a ticket, while I experienced more enjoyment seeing the little Pixar light do its introduction jump than practically any moment in this film.