Anthony's Film Review - Inside Out 2 (2024)

The sequel to Inside Out expands on the first film with cleverness and heart...

Inside Out 2 is a very good movie sequel. It does what any movie sequel should do: significantly expand on and develop the characters and fictional world further. It's an opportunity to have familiar characters face new adventures and introduce new characters to liven or shake things up. This is how one produces new originality to thrill the audience the same way they were thrilled by the originality of the previous film. The best part is that Inside Out 2 completely avoids the mistake of rehashing the first film.

There are two ways that this Disney/Pixar film brings new life to its predecessor. First off, the main character, a girl named Riley, was a preteen in the first film and is now 13 years old in this one. Second, a new set of emotions enter Riley's mind: Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment, and Nostalgia. The familiar emotions of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust find themselves having less influence over Riley than they used to. Perhaps, almost none at all, because the emotions of adolescence seem to have a stronger grip.

Actually, I should mention a third way Inside Out 2 expands on the previous movie. In that original film, Riley's mind was represented primarily by a control room with a button console operated by the emotions. Here, we find that the control room acting as the headquarters is only one part of Riley's mind. There are additional places that represent other parts of her inner psyche. They are so fun to discover that I'll only share one example: a river with random objects floating in it, which is Riley's stream of consciousness. Get it? Stream? Yeah, the pun is clever. The same goes for other clever and funny features of Riley's mind shown in the film.

This movie is a little over 90 minutes long, so the pacing of the story and the dialogue is rather quick. But once you get used to that, you're in for a real treat with two parallel storylines. In the world outside Riley's mind, she is trying out for a high school ice hockey team, with the opportunity to play alongside a champion player she admires, at potentially the cost of her relationship with two long-time friends. Within the world of Riley's mind, Anxiety has taken control of the console, aided mainly by Envy. As for Joy and the old gang of emotions, they are banished and imprisoned away from the control room. It becomes a race against time for Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust to restore Riley's old self.

Just by being imaginative with the representations of the different aspects of Riley's mind, this movie easily won me over. It even goes as far as help me appreciate the first film more. I love how the expanded cast of anthropomorphized emotions create mental and emotional complexity, in line with the struggles of adolescence. As the film ended, I found myself imagining an Inside Out 3 with Riley entering young adulthood and the emotions associated with that. OK, maybe that movie won't see the light of day, but the fact that I even pictured it shows how much Inside Out 2 really captured my imagination.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Inside Out 2, visit the Internet Movie Database.

In addition, check out my review of Inside Out.