I really enjoyed Inside Out 2, though I definitely had a feeling that there was something missing from the 3rd act. The film does a nice job of re-establishing the characters from the first film. The film does a nice job of establishing the new, very and likeable emotions inside Riley’s head.
But there is something in the scale of the overall movie that feels less expansive than the first film.
In a weird way - or weird for a middle-aged man to discuss - the troubles start with the flashing “puberty” button, which for a 13-year-old girl seems as likely as not to coincide with her first period. Yes, I get that this analysis is a bit too specific… but it was my immediate thought when that button went off, connecting instantly for me to the masterful Turning Red, which was dumped by the Chapek version of Disney, which seemed eternally fearful of women in how it dumped some really good movies, including the painfully mishandled Encanto. “Are they really going to do another film about a teen girl getting her period?!?!,” I wondered.
They did not.
I don’t want to try to rewrite Inside Out 2 into my idea of Inside Out 2, but the idea of getting into puberty has some danger zones… which this movie avoids like the plague. The closest the film gets to sex is Riley’s attraction to a videogame character… not even a live boy band member (which they already had in the first film). Riley hangs out with some older girls for the first time in this journey… none of whom smoke or sneak hard lemonade or at least talk about boys like they are members of the opposite sex. There is a moment or two when Riley’s girl crush on a female athlete seems like it might have a scent of same-sex interest… but it goes nowhere and both we and the movie, I think, forget it. Which is okay, ultimately. I didn’t need Inside Out 2 to be about Riley having fantasies in the locker room showers.
(For the record, the locker room is another weird non-starter. There is a hint about being uncomfortable changing in front of one another… people are uncomfortable with their bodies and often even more uncomfortable with people who aren’t uncomfortable with their bodies… but it’s another string left hanging like it was never mentioned rather than finding a way to hit the note hard and not make it awkward.)
I don’t think I am giving anything too intimate about my 14-year-old child when I say that he fully discovered his penis in his 13th year… probably earlier… but they became really good friends last year. I can’t speak for the sexual awakening of young girls and I am making scrunched up faces and shaking my head “no” even as I am typing this. But I would guess that girls, who mature faster than boys, are at least as advanced in this way as their relatively crude counterparts.
Now… the fact that typing the last paragraph made me so uncomfortable explains why this material is not where the filmmakers behind Inside Out 2 could be expected to go in any way other than the most subtle imaginable. An animated movie about a 13-year-old girl finding her sexuality is not going to happen… and really should not happen.
But there could have been a boy who attracts her in some way. As it turns out, there is a short on Disney+ called, Riley’s First Date?, which is set when she is 12. It’s not about sex. It’s about kids that age… who know there is an opposite sex, even if they aren’t ready to engage that reality fully. My wife and I bought our niece a standee of one of the One Direction kids for her 13th birthday… at her request. This is not a stretch. Early, inexperienced sexuality is very, very confusing… which is what these movies are about, no?
As noted earlier, it’s not just sex… it’s the many temptations that 13-year-olds are heir to. Inside Out 2 leans into cliques, making hair changes, and doing things that don’t make you happy to fit in. But the big, scary, bad choice in this film is sneaking around to get an early glimpse at a report card. OOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Sometime in the 3rd act, it suddenly dawned on me that this entire movie was going to be about one long weekend at a sport training event (hockey). The before and after were not full acts, but prologue and epilogue. I was having a really good time. I like so much about this material. But I was also disappointed. I didn’t need the R-rated Inside Out… just a bit more edge.
It then occurred to me that there is a weird relationship between Inside Out 2, Furiosa, and Moana 2.
Obviously, I haven’t seen Moana 2. But we do know that the production was originally meant to be a companion series on Disney+, not a new movie. Different directors and writers. No songs that we know of by Lin-Manuel Miranda. It could be great. It could be a step behind.
Furiosa was made by the legendary George Miller. But they gave up the movie stars from Fury Road and the Max character almost completely. I love the movie… but it’s not as big a spectacle as Fury Road was. It’s kind of an epic sidebar.
And that is kind of how I feel about Inside Out 2.
According to imdbPro, the film went into pre-production in September 2022, less than 2 years ago. They refused to pay the asks of Mindy Kailing and Bill Hader. (With due respect to their replacements… I noticed.) And the scale is smaller than the original theatrical film had. All of this screams that this was intended for Disney+ and not for theatrical. According to one Disney board online, that was the plan as recently as last September. Apparently, the original announcement at D23 said the film would be “out” during the summer of 2024. So nothing definitive.
The point is, I really enjoyed the film. It just felt less ambitious and less daring than the original film. I mean, Bing Bong (from the first film) is an insanely daring choice for a kids film. I am a big fan of the idea of other kinds of animation being part of Riley’s memory… but Bing “f-ing” Bong… Shakespearean. An imaginary friend 65 years after Harvey and nearly a decade before IF. And there is nothing that comes close to the ballsy use of surrealism in the original film.
There seems to be a lot of resistance to Inside Out 2 because it doesn’t stand up as one of the greatest animated films ever made, as the original does. The thing about Pixar is that the company has regularly, consistently changed the expectations of animation. And I think it is fair to say that none of the Pixar sequels were better than the originals. The only ones in contention are the Toy Story films, as there were such leaps in the technology. But how I remember sitting in a Disney screening room, going underwater in a way never experienced before in Finding Nemo. Or the epic loneliness and abiding kindness of Wall-E. The relentless energy of The Incredibles. The impossible becoming reality in Ratatouille. The emotion of Up. And the ideas that never stopped evolving, demanding I truly work intellectually and emotionally through Inside Out.
First love is an amazing thing. And Pixar delivered first love so many times.
There is still shining and surprising first love singularities in Disney animation, from Zootopia to Encanto to Moana and Turning Red, changing expectations, just as the Katzenberg era at Disney, with all the musicals, created its own golden age, capped off by The Lion King. And let’s not leave out the DW Animation Shreks and the Illumination contributions, led by the Minions.
Point is… there is no animation Godfather II. And Inside Out 2 isn’t the first.
But it’s still a terrific time at the movies… even if we wish it aspired to a bit more and was a bit more daring.
Until tomorrow…
Totally agree. Really liked it, but not one tear. Very Sad.