Movie Thoughts: Inside Out 2 (2024)

• Released: June 12, 2024
• Directed by: Kelsey Mann
• Running time: 1h 36min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

Riley enters puberty while at hockey camp, leading to new emotions who come into conflict with her old emotions.

My Thoughts

I'm not the biggest Pixar fan in the world but I do have a real soft spot for their first Inside Out movie. It came to me when I was at a very vulnerable stage in my life and the fact that it taught the importance of the emotion of sadness really stuck a chord with me.

Now that we have a sequel, it's...honestly quite good. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that (because I thought the trailer was kind of dumb) but yeah, this is overall a rather solid film I quite enjoyed. Not as much as the first, but I had a fun time. It's still very creative, I enjoyed both the plots (the Riley plot and the emotions side of things), it looks great, and it's very nice that we get some more expansion of the characters of Anger, Disgust and Fear, as well as some of the new characters, of course.

If I do have a few gripes with it, one of them would have to be that at some points it really feels like the movie is hitting similar plot points to the first movie. Normally I don't notice these kind of things upon a first watch but I did have a few moments while watching this where I was like "this again?". This includes stuff like Riley having some sort of upheaval in her life, the emotions being separated from HQ and having to travel through Riley's mind to get back while coming across several concepts of thought and personality, a McGuffin they need to find/keep safe to save Riley (in the first movie the Core Memories, in this movie the Sense of Self), and one big "all is lost" moment where Joy lets out all her emotions and thinks things are hopeless before eventually regaining her confidence. Especially the last moment in the sequel is really similar to that of the first.

Another thing I thought was kind of "eh" was the ending of the movie, which heavily implies Riley get into the Firehawks. Which is a good ending, I'm happy for Riley, but it doesn't feel entirely earned. Especially since a lot of what Riley did on hockey camp wasn't sportsmanlike at all and the coach herself even wrote in her notebook that she thought Riley wasn't ready for the Firehawks.

And this could all work...if there had been a solid moment of turnaround where we got to see coach realize that Riley maybe does have what it takes after all. But there's not really a moment like this, making Riley getting into the Firehawks feel a bit forced and like a bit too cheerful of an ending to be realistic.

But aside from these gripes I think this is still a solid film. While I don't agree with what some people are saying that this is on par or perhaps even better than the first, I do think this is a fun and creative movie that looks great and has a lot of merit to it.