The one emotion that would express the current state of Disney/Pixar studios has to be euphoria. The studio’s emotionally charged Inside Out 2 has officially surpassed Marvel’s Avengers to become the tenth highest-grossing film of all time.
After a little over six weeks of release, Inside Out 2 has generated a total worldwide tally of $1.55 billion with $626 million of that total coming from the domestic box office.
But don’t expect the film to stop there. Pulling in $6.7 million over the past weekend, the movie is poised to break more records and possibly eclipse the worldwide numbers of at least two more films, 2019’s The Lion King and Jurassic World, respectively.
But What Has Made This Sequel Resonate With Audiences?
The success of Inside Out 2 can be attributed to several factors. Number one on that list is loyalty to the original film, both by Disney/Pixar in the handling of the sequel and the audiences who have grown up with the focus character, Riley.
New Emotions
Of course growing up leads to new emotions, or emotional growth. Inside Out 2 picks up where the heartwarming original film left off, plunging us back into Riley’s emotional universe as she navigates adolescence. New emotions like Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment join the emotional mix, altogether adding layers to Riley’s story and portraying the bittersweet essence of growing up.
A Cute Film Addict Review of the Two Films
Inside Out
Inside Out takes us deep into the heart and mind of a kid on the brink of adolescence. And what co-directors Pete Docter, the driving force behind Monsters Inc. and Up, and Ronnie del Carmen did was make a film about what it feels like to be 11 years old, combined with all the shifting sensations and certainties that entails, doing so through the lens of dueling emotions embodied in lovable cartoon forms. The idea of dramatizing inner lives in animation was not necessarily new, but few films have explored the concept with the wit and profound pathos as Docter and del Carmen did with this film in 2015.
Inside Out clearly has trace elements of previous flicks from Pixar Studios. It has the mismatched pairings, a support team working to ensure a child’s happiness, the fascination with working practices, and a journey to get home that have figured into the studio’s work for years. Yet, even upon multiple viewings, there continues to be a freshness here.
The exterior story is a simple one: with her dad landing a demanding job in downtown San Francisco, tomboyish 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is uprooted from her idyllic hockey-playing life in rural Minnesota. But it’s Riley’s inner space that’s all abuzz. Yellow manic pixie dream girl Joy (a buoyant Amy Poehler) has ruled the brain trust, keeping the other emotions, Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) in check. But with all the change (the move, puberty), Sadness is about to have her day.
What’s great here is the simple, lucid logic the script imbues in the set-up. The Emotions dictate Riley’s feelings in a shiny space-age headquarters dominated by an enormous control panel. Pixar is clearly enamored with such consoles; building a whole short film, Lifted (2006) around one. Festooned with tubes and shelves where memories are moved and stored as gold orbs, the pillars that Riley’s life are built on, such as friendship, hockey and family, are represented as floating islands like the areas in a theme park. It’s a magic trick pulled off to perfection as Docter and del Carmen let us luxuriate and play in this world without letting the pace and urgency of the storytelling sag.
The inciting incident that sees these pillars begin to crumble is a crisis occurring on Riley’s first day at a new school, which ejects Sadness and Joy from headquarters into the darkest recesses of Riley’s mind. It is here that the film becomes an odd-couple road trip as the pair travel through Long Term Memory, Abstract Thought and Dream Production, hooking up with Riley’s long-forgotten, elephant-like imaginary friend, named Bing Bong (portrayed by Richard Kind). It is during these moments, as they try to make their way back to base, that the wit and imagination of the movie is on full display.
And yet Docter and del Carmen never get lost in their fantasy creations. Never losing focus, they always keep front and center the impact of the travails of Joy and Sadness on Riley’s life, making sure that it doesn’t become too abstract to be relatable. Undeniably one of the most affecting humans in a Pixar film, Riley is a likable pre-teen, who is trying her best to be strong for her overly busy dad while also struggling with the newness that has just entered her life. To underline the point, the two worlds are visually poles apart. Inside Riley’s head is an explosion of color and a riot of vibrancy. Meanwhile, outside Riley’s world, San Francisco is colorless and dull, muted by a seemingly permanent Bay-area fog.
Ultimately, Inside Out strongly plays as a film though humorous, that dares give a realistic portrayal of human nature, respecting the complex play of burgeoning emotions and illustrating the role sadness plays in turning children into adolescents. It’s as poignant a portrait of the loss of innocence as been on film in quite some time.
Of course, you can find wide ranging opinions on what is the absolute pinnacle of Pixar storytelling. Some people would say the Toy Story Franchise has the richer characters, while others would point to Up for its deeper reservoirs of feelings. But if you cherish the studio for continually coming up with bold, original, funny, emotionally satisfying ideas executed beautifully, then Inside Out delivers the goods.
The Verdict: Audacious as it is silly, funny as it is imaginative, Inside Out was a wonderful surprise in 2015 and still plays strong nine years later.
A Cute Film Addictive Rating 8.8/10
Inside Out 2 (The Secret of Sequel Success)
I have to admit, as much as I was excited when I first heard about the follow up to Inside Out, I was very nervous as well. I mean, it was risky for Pixar films to follow up the original that was so brilliant. With the lightest of touches, it dug into the foundations of the human brain and seemed to leave any sequel with little to do but retread. The question, where else do you go?
Wisely, the answer for Inside Out 2, was not to try and outsmart the original, but to continue and mature Riley’s emotional journey. This is immediately evident in the choice to begin on the already laid narrative path, rather than reroute for the sake of originality.
Riley, now 13, is about to enter high school, but puberty has struck and brought with it new, more complicated emotions. Heading up the cast of new emotions is Anxiety (Maya Hawke), with friends Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Houser). Soon Riley is faced with choosing between her old friends and a potential life with a cool new crowd, and her childhood emotions are cast into the wilderness as Anxiety leads her team in trying to shape a new Riley who’s ready for high-school life.
The story of Inside Out was about learning to accept all of our emotions, and it’s worthy sequel, Inside Out 2 is about learning how and when to control those emotions. Even more, it’s a pun-laden adventure through Riley’s mind, as Joy and friends traverse sar-chasms and get locked away with dark secrets in a quest to reach the back of her mind and rescue the true nature she’s suppressing. This body of the movie is just as funny and powerful as the framework of the original. New director Kelsey Mann, again keeps it within the same frame with Pete Docter’s work, moving quickly through the jokes, trusting the audience’s intelligence, and never preening over his cleverness.
It is true that some of the new characters are a bit thin, but they are used for some first-rate visual comedy, like Embarrassment, ever desperate to hide despite his large appearance. Wonderfully shaped, however, is Anxiety, a misguided not-quite-villain who worries herself and thus Riley into disaster. Together with Joy, they are the heart of this more than worthy sequel, about the bits of ourselves we can make better and the parts we just have to learn to live with.
The Verdict: Since Pixar hit it big with Toy Story in 1995, they have consistently put out films with great ideas and quite frequently hit their mark. That being said, they delivered a sequel here that is on par with any of the Toy Story series.
A Cute Film Addictive Rating 8.6/10
I hope you have enjoyed our journey to the depths of Riley’s mind. For those of you that made it back, I have a little bonus for you. In 2006, Pixar created another one of a kind short that accompanied the film Ratatouille. As likable and funny as it ever was, if you haven’t seen it since then, take another look.
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