I don’t want to start this off with sentiments like Pixar is back because Lightyear didn’t work for many when it was released. It also wasn’t their fault that four of their films were directly harmed by the 2020 pandemic. Soul, Luca, and Turning Red are all excellent films, and Elemental ended up doing well financially and with many audiences, even with its slow start at the box office. Yet all those are new concepts, and this summer, Pixar returns to one of the most loved and celebrated animated feature films of recent memory, Inside Out, a film that turns the internal makeup of a young girl’s mind and her emotions into characters. Now, I’ve never seen that whole film. It reminded me of the old FOX sitcom called Herman’s Head, which I had never made the time to see. If you can forgive the infraction against the animation gods, it’s time to talk about the sequel Inside Out 2. The film follows Riley, the young girl now a teenager and entering the phase of puberty, and how the five core emotions are now joined by four new emotions who basically engage in a coup to take over Riley as the world is too complex for just Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. The new emotions are led by Anxiety, which takes planning to the extreme and causes more difficulty for Riley than Anxiety can ever prepare for. The five core emotions try to return to the headquarters to right the emotional ship for Riley.
Since I don’t have the same history with this film as others besides memes of the emotion characters, I’m going to start with how the film looks. This might be the best-looking Pixar film they ever made. The subtleties of the textures and tiny details on the characters and world astounded me. I couldn’t stop myself from focusing on things like Sadness’ hair strands as they move with weight and textures on textures just in that. Even how the emotions are made of glowing fuzzy light bead-like particles. They move fluidly yet have weight, and the squash and stretch, core tenets of animation, are just so impressive. The human world of Riley has a very natural and realistic feel to it while also keeping the Pixar visual aesthetic it’s known for. This does feel like an evolution of what was in Lightyear, even as people don’t care for it; the visuals are stunning, and the fidelity of detail of the characters and the world really pushed what they had been doing to a new level, but this smashes that easily. Everything feels familiar, from the hair to the clothing to the hockey gear Riley wears, and you are entirely in the world, even for a person like me who didn’t see the first film. Last, on the visuals, this film captures the look of the film the best, or I should say film-making techniques in terms of cinematography. There are things done with the frame and camera focal lengths and lens types that, for me, an enthusiast, noticed that I don’t think they’ve done as much before, and it is used to communicate the nature of what Riley is feelings while moving through the world is done to perfection. I can’t think of any way to improve it, as I’m so surprised they can do it.
For the story, I was impressed by how they were able to turn these internal struggles into an adventure story for emotion characters and such an excellent coming-of-age drama for Riley. The new gen emotions have great looks and remind me of muppets. Anxiety voiced by Maya Hawke is a great foil for Amy Poehler’s Joy; unlike the other emotions she’s known, this is one Joy just can’t overcome with spunk and a go-getter attitude. Anxiety makes sense, and much like real life, it does until it doesn’t, and things just start falling apart because of all the things that it can make you think about, making all the possibilities reality when they aren’t. Ayo Edebiri’s Envy is Anxiety’s road dog; in the film, they are a perfect duo; the character steals a lot of the shine from other characters purely based on the vocal performance. Ennui, voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos, is a delight as well. The older cast and the replacements like Tony Hale and Liza Lapira are great with their performances. Excellent big performances that capture the idea of these emotions. There are some great jokes in the film as well, such as how they interpret tone, thinking, and communication as physical things the emotions have to overcome in their journey. I was cracking up from laughter the entire time in the theater. I don’t want to spoil or give away more of the film as it’s so far one of the must-see films of the year. Inside Out 2 is one of the best-written and crafted animated films I’ve seen in years and lives up to the standard that people have of Pixar. Inside Out 2 should be a big summer hit.
Score: A+
RIOTUS 