Mini Review: Inside Out 2!

     Before I start my review on Inside Out 2, I want to quickly establish the idea of a "mini review" in the context of my blog. Something I've noticed in my writing is that sometimes, I'm too wordy and I end up using too many words when few word do trick. In an effort to practice being more concise, I'm placing a 1000 word limit on any "mini review" I do in the future. Hopefully this ends up being beneficial to my writing and your reading experience!

    

    If you have young family members or like watching animated movies yourself, then the name "Inside Out" is instantly recognizable as the 2015 hit movie that centered around Riley, a young girl whose family just moved to San Francisco, and the personification of her emotions within her, including Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. The movie tackles the complexity of dealing with a range of emotions in the face of change and ends with a pretty deep message about how every emotion is important to feel. The central conflict of that movie was focused around Joy coming to terms with the idea that Sadness is also a valid and important emotion for Riley to feel, rather than ignoring any negative emotions in favor of always being joyful.

    While the original movie was a hit with popular audiences and critics for the heartwarming story and loveable characters, it wasn't without its criticisms. There were two big points of criticism that were directed at this film: 1) Riley herself felt like less of her own character and more "a setting", and 2) the majority of the film was centered around the conflict between Joy and Sadness, sidelining the other emotion characters. Luckily, with the release of Inside Out 2, it seems that Pixar heard these critiques and fixed them for the next installment of the series!

    In Inside Out 2, a teenage Riley attends a hockey camp in preparation for her going to high school and to make new friends, since her current friends won't be going to the same school as her. During her stay at the camp, new emotion characters develop within Riley to help her deal with more complex emotional situations, introducing Embarrassment, Ennui (boredom), Envy, and the star/antagonist of the film, Anxiety. After some conflict, Anxiety sends the original emotions to the far reaches of Riley's mind, leaving Anxiety in control of Riley's decision-making. The original emotions must race back to Riley's emotional HQ before Anxiety's decisions screw Riley's life up at hockey camp.

    There's a few things I actually really enjoyed about this movie. After hearing fan critiques about the original movie, the second film dedicates a lot more screen time on Riley's "real-life" story, and further characterizes her beyond simply "girl struggling with her emotions". Additionally, there is way more time spent with all of Riley's emotions, rather than just bouncing between Joy and Sadness. The movie does a surprisingly good job of balancing out a NINE-CHARACTER cast, giving each character their own "moment" in the film to characterize them and make them feel useful, which is frankly really impressive.

    The breakout star of this film was Anxiety, voiced excellently by Maya Hawke. I was already expecting a sort of frantic but well-meaning characterization for Anxiety, but I expected it to be more of a facade for more a more controlling impulse that exists within all of us. Surprisingly, there was no "twist villain" moment for Anxiety- her intentions are actually pretty clear from the very beginning. Anxiety isn't just a stress response, its also the emotion responsible for foresight and thinking ahead to consider all possibilities of a decision. This causes a unique dynamic to unfurl between all of the emotions, as they witness Anxiety's foresight to be successful in a few social situations that Riley enters, which sort of dethrones Joy as the defacto leader of the emotions (which is the first part of conflict). However, once Anxiety realizes that the other emotions are getting "in the way" of Anxiety's plan for Riley's success, she gets rid of them because that's what she believes is the best for Riley, which is a flawed but understandable mentality.

    When I think about it, pretty much every voice performance was on point, from each of the main emotions to the side characters like Riley's videogame crush, or the cartoon friends that Riley stores in her repressed memories. There's only two minor nitpicks I have with the film. First of all, the climax of the film revolves around an anxiety attack that Riley faces during a hockey game, which isn't my issue (I actually really liked this scene). I just thought that the resolution to this final conflict would have used more of the previously established characters from Riley's repressed memories (rather than just one). It just sort of confused me how there were new characters set up earlier in the movie that don't get used besides for one in the climax, and another in the post-credits scene.

My other critique is less of a critique about the film itself and more about the film's marketing. If you were on social media and saw the teasers and trailers for Inside Out 2, you likely saw the comments and general discourse surrounding this film being very queer-oriented, speculating over whether Riley is gay or not. While it is fairly common online for people to assign a queer sexuality to characters with no confirmed sexuality (in the form of a headcanon, or personal interpretation/assumption), it was almost taken as a fact for this movie. And its not really hard to see why: in almost every trailer, there was some sort of rainbow imagery/symbolism and more incriminatingly, a large focus on Riley's obsession with another female character. While in the movie it was revealed that Riley only obsesses over this other character because she wants to fit in with new highschool friends, it would be remiss to not acknowledge that a lot of the marketing was clearly supposed to allude to Riley being gay, effectively queerbaiting the audiences. While I don't think its horrible that Riley didn't turn out to be gay in the film, I think that the marketing was meant to take advantage of queer audiences that projected their experiences with struggling with their sexuality and the anxiety they dealt with, which is wrong in my opinion.

Besides those two nitpicks, I thought this was an otherwise good movie and a great sequel! I'd recommend this movie to both young and older audiences!