Inside Out 2
Currently only in theaters
Runtime: 1 Hour and 36 Minutes
Rated PG
Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust have been working together, and mostly getting along, in their endeavour to help Riley navigate the waters of life. When puberty hits new emotions get thrown into the mix causing a major disruption to headquarters and hockey camp, where Riley finds herself. After a confrontation with with new emotion, Anxiety, the original emotions get suppressed, kicked out of Headquarters, and must find their way back after rescuing Riley’s “sense of self.”
Themes: “Oh, my gosh! I'm Anxiety. Where can I put my stuff?”
Emotions, growing up, puberty, fitting in, hockey, family, beliefs, being hard on yourself, repressed memories, bad memories vs good memories, sarcasm, teens, making friends, losing friends, the way we view ourselves, joy, fear, disgust, sadness, anger, anxiety, embarrassment, envy, ennui (aka boredom), change, self confidence, change, and controlling one’s emotions.
Language:
No curse words or religious exclamations. They do use the words heck, gosh, and moron. Joy calls one of the new emotions Wee Wee, twice.
Stuff to be aware of: “Welp, there's a preview of the next ten years.”
Sexual Things - A few scenes take place in a locker room and some of the girls are wearing sports bras that can be seen. Inside Riley there is a spot called Mount Crushmoore in which several boys faces are carved. Riley goes away for a three days to hockey camp. When her parents are taking her Riley’s dad asks her mom what they are going to do with their “big weekend” and he raises his eyebrows. Riley’s mom lists off chores and her Dad looks disappointed. Well played Pixar.
Violence - There is some cartoon violence, nothing more than what you saw in the first movie. There is lots of hockey in the movie which means some pushing and shoving. One kid gets hurt, but recovers pretty quick.
Other things - Embarrassment bends over and you can see the top of his butt crack.
Overall: “This whole trip is just a series of deader and deader and deader ends!”
Okay, the negative first….
It was entertaining, but didn’t feel as well written and creative as the first. It has some fun parts, but the story feels very similar to the first movie, which hurts it. The story sees the original emotions end up outside of headquarters instead of just Joy and Sadness. There is also a MacGuffin that must be recovered before the crew can return to headquarters. The MacGuffin is Riley’s sense of self, which is new for this movie. It being such a big part of the plot forces the story sometimes to inch along (I got bored during part of it) and then later rush to a conclusion, as if the movie needed to be under a certain time limit.
The GOOD - The story NAILS the onslaught of emotions when puberty hits. Everything in the movie that revolves around growing up and puberty will hit home pretty hard, in a good way. I laughed out loud a few times and shed a tear. Be warned, you may cry. Lastly, Pixar gets an A++++ for capturing anxiety and a panic attack perfectly.
It is very kid friendly and I will likely watch it at least once more with my family. If you really loved the original, you will probably enjoy/love this one. It is a cute movie and a worthy sequel, even if it feels to similar to the first one.