Inside Out 2 (2024)

Inside Out 2 (2024)

9/10

Starring

Amy Poehler

Maya Hawke

Kensington Tallman

Liza Lapira

Tony Hale

 

Directed by Kelsey Mann

 

Inside Out 2 is a nine-year gap release from the first animation, Inside Out (2015).

You get the feeling that Disney needed to hit a bad point, which they are in right now, before deciding to go back to basics. This animation is why we love Disney’s animations, and it was done by their Pixar studio team. It focused on storytelling and detailed world building rather than the Disney’s new animations before this, which had a problem of being plagued with trying to pass a message to appeal to some minority group. All those film in the end had bad stories and their characters were non-memorable. Their old ways of setting the playing field by building a new world while setting boundaries then breaking the character to pieces and putting everything back together again, is the formula they went back to in this animation. This animation for me is a turning point and I do hope future Disney animations follow suit of sticking to a good story and building memorable characters.

Inside Out 2 takes us back to the unity formed from the first animation of the various characters in Riley’s head. In the first animation, all of Riley emotions are individual characters controlling her actions from a control board in her head. We get to know from the first animation that each emotion has a place in her sense of self. Well, that was all thrown out the window the moment puberty hit. This animation hit home with how I remember puberty was for me. The way Riley acted was so on point, when she wanted to fit in. The anxiety of growing up and wanting nothing to do with your old self and wanting to be like the cool kids. The problem of walking away too quickly from all the things that made you who you are, and wanting to be someone else, an idea of what you have deemed as cool.

So, the moment puberty hit when Riley became thirteen new emotions (Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment) are released to the control centre of Riley’s head, and they shoved the old emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust) out. Anxiety took control and tried to steer Riley right because of the fear of what is to come. This new behaviour caused Riley to ditch her old friends to which she went to the hockey camp with, to try and fit in with her new friends. She starts to pretend to like what they like, and lie about who she really is, so that she can fit in. Anxiety pushed Riley hard, making her do things that she normally would not do, and make Riley push her body beyond the limit to which it can take.

We see the old emotions trapped in the streams of consciousness, trying to get Riley’s sense of self from the back of her mind and bring it to the control centre. While Sadness is sent to the centre to try to save Riley, by recalling the old emotions so that Riley does not lose it all in the end.

This animation is doing well in the box-office, and I hope Disney learns from this and continue to give us classics.