Inside my mind while watching “Inside Out 2,” my anger character was livid.
Overall, the film did a great job showing how young people change when they hit puberty. But, one of the new characters, Anxiety, made the movie annoying to even watch. Director, Kelsey Mann, had a goal of spreading awareness of having anxiety but it only made me HAVE anxiety while watching the film.
The movie is based through the mind of the main character-Riley (Kensington Tallman). However; 99% of the story line is based on the emotions in Riley’s mind. This movie is part of a series, the first “Inside Out” came out almost 10 years ago.
Mann picked up the sequel where it left off. She had the same emotions of Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) as she did before. Also gave a quick recap at the start of the movie so viewers wouldn’t be confused upon watching the second movie.
Then it just got worse by the second. Mann brought in four new characters-Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Anxiety (Maya Hawke)-to show puberty, but it only fueled my anger instead.
First, Mann designed all the characters except Anxiety to be “good looking” which just made it hard to look at the screen because Anxiety was on it all the time. She genuinely looked as if she got electrocuted for an hour straight.
Anxiety also caused every single problem that Riley had but in an extreme case. For example, Anxiety manipulated Riley to wake up in the dead of night to walk to the hockey rink, and sneak into her coaches office to read the ‘red notebook’ which had all the coaches notes.
Some of the experiences just aren’t even possible. If Mann moved the level of Anxiety from a 15 out of 10, down to even a 10 out of 10, this movie would be sort of good.
Mann did throw some humor in the movie which did take away my anger, for a second. Sideline character Pouchy (James Austin Johnson) was a small touch but made a huge impact. Pouchy was a clearly animated character that showed up at random times to “save the day” with a very autotune sounding voice.
Mann also added a small part into the character Embarrassment. Every time Embarrassment turned around, it showed his butt-crack. Let’s just say, everyone laughed at those parts.
Other than those small touches, I passionately disliked the movie. My anger character was the only one working my emotions for the painful 1 hour and 36 minutes I spent watching “Inside Out 2.”
My rating is a 1 out of 10.
