Inside Out 2 (Kelsey Mann, 2024)

Public hair

Aaaand just because it's summer and we're all entitled to a bit of fun, thought I'd drop in and check out how Pixar's doing.

Commercially-- pretty good, of course. Their latest Inside Out 2 has earned $700 million on its second weekend more than making up for its $200 million production budget, a loud and healthy sign (like a cow fart) that Pixar should keep doing what it's been doing all along: sequels to previous big hits, less personal projects and more crowd-pleasing merchandise-friendly corporate concepts that cater to the lowest common denominator. 

So Joy, Anger, Sadness, Fear, and Disgust are back, this time nurturing a 'Sense of Self,' a sparkly little Christmas tree of a sprout built only from good memories ("I am a good person" it whispers, and you think of Al Franken's Stuart Smiley, desperately pumping himself up before a dress mirror)-- bad memory balls are slingshot to the back of the heroine Riley's cavernous mind, where you can be sure (Chekov's balls?) they will return to figure in the plot, big time. 

Enter the mind workers, a team of Minion ripoffs (c'mon Pixar!) arrived to chainsaw and wrecking ball the place up for future expansion; hefty hint of what's to come, only Joy and her team are too busy driving Riley's brain to notice the red button at the edge of the control panel foreshadowed in the first movie, which suddenly decides to light up and shriek its head off. Enter Puberty, where the controls have been gauged to a far more sensitive setting (Anger taps a dial and Riley snaps at her parents; Fear featherbrushes a lever and Riley cringes in terror at what she's done), and enter new emotions: Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui, and most important of all, Anxiety. Anxiety has the energy of four Joys, and when Riley is thrown into a new situation-- she's been invited to a weekend hockey camp, where she must muster the skill to impress the camp's demanding coach-- the newer emotions prove more competent to face the challenge. The new trap the old in a mason jar and send them on a dump truck to exile, in a vault somewhere near the back regions of Riley's mind. 

So many questions (actually I had questions about the first movie). First-- is Pixar going to stick to this look, the generic digitally generated smooth-motion smoothskinned 3D animation  they've been using for the past O twenty-nine years? Because I see Miles Morales popping his head up from the back row saying 'This is so early 2000s!' and Maasaki Yuasa lounging in a seat behind him yawning. Funny putting out a movie about growth and development when your basic look hasn't moved beyond digitally rendered stuffed toys. 

And funny how prescriptive and therapeutic this all is-- emotional veggies for American preteens, warning them about this oncoming monster called adolescence. Different feelings are clearly tagged and compartmentalized, and the occasional mistake is labeled a learning experience-- everything about the human mind, arguably the most complex and mysterious instrument in the world perhaps the universe, broken down to brightly colored easily assembled or disassembled Lego bricks. Had that problem with the original Inside Out, and have that problem with this movie, only intensified by hormones.

Second: Anxiety is a perfectly valid emotion-- her sugar fueled (at least I assume it's sugar fueled, which from experience isn't all that effective-- can't Riley sneak a sip from her parents' coffee cup? Maybe trade with her classmates for some uppers?) control-freak campaign to get into the coach's elite hockey team drives the rest of the picture forward, and leaves the rest of us mildly interested in her eventual downfall. But Envy isn't given much to do-- can't Riley be jealous of hockey star Val Ortiz's gorgeous flowing hair? Ennui-- okay makes sense she doesn't do much (she's funny tho). And Embarrassment is too shy to make much of a difference either (That said, a zit just appeared on Riley's chin. Shouldn't she be mortified?). 

Doesn't puberty come with other emotions? Bitterness can leave a bad taste in the mouth along with her ever-present sibling Disappointment, Frustration can sit in one corner seething like a time bomb, and don't get me started with Malice. Malice adds a sharp edge to everything and would have given Riley a decided advantage in her popularity campaign-- Malice would at least be fun to watch as she works her poison into everyone else, and her sister Contempt would be just as fun to watch pulling everyone down around her.  

And what about Lust? If puberty is about anything it's all about lust. Don't just mean a Mount Crushmore-- snore-- I mean I saw the way Riley looked at Val; that was a full blown avalanche of hormonal adoration poised to burst but never does. Where's Riley's first kiss? Her first French kiss? Her first makeout session? Are we going to have to wait for Inside Out 3 (rated PG 13) and maybe Inside Out 4: Pop Goes Her Cherry (rated R)? Ye gads, are we going to have to have another Inside Out sequel? I suppose-- the boxoffice cries out for one-- but they better step up their game.