Last night, for reasons, I ended up watching Inside Out 2 with my mom. Here's my raw review.
To be completely honest, I had no intention of ever watching the movie. Inside Out itself is not really on my radar. I liked it when it came out and that's about all I got for you. But, here we are. I think the brain lore is confusing. The sar-chasm (sarcasm b/c Reilly starts being a classic teen) thing really chafed me, but it's no more or less odd than anything else presented in the mind-space. Idk if it's real or not, maybe it was some bullshit i read on tumblr, but if you did tell me there were disney execs who monitored strictly the relationship between Reilly and Val (that was her name right? i'm not looking it up rn, so we are calling the high school hockey captain with the red streak as Val), I would believe you. Bc I, a seasoned queer, instantly spotted Reilly's queer awakening there but it is heavily morphed into Reilly's obsession to fit in when she gets to high school.
Not a bad thing, focusing on friendship, but like. It's disney so I'll take any blows I want. I'll never forgive, never forget :) Anxiety being the villain, even the sort of none villain that they become at the end, i feel was a weird choice. It would've been interesting to see an exploration of anxiety, especially with the slow reveal of how anxiety cares for reilly the same ass the other emotions. Embarssment with the no eye contact, select mutism thing was giving autism and i loved that but also that's me reading into the movie. And again, it's a weird choice to have these new emotions be introduced as the bad guys. I hate the nostalgia gag. Fuck that gag.
The way disney explores emotions and the mind-space in Inside Out i feel limits how one can go about exploring a character driven narrative. Inside Out 2 cannibalizes this method to present a rather mid kids movie. I'd let a kid watch Inside Out because at least it's cute. Inside Out 2 is for... who? Not kids, often it is painfully clear an adult wrote this. Not adults, i don't think it's appealing to too many of them. This isn't even to say there weren't moments where the film got me. The opening has several quick shots into different people's minds. I thought the film would carry like that, giving glimpses into different brains, but this quickly stops. I also found myself trying not to cry when Reilly has a panic attack, I think having that moment of being so focused on being good at something (especially a sport) at a younger age and then you accidentally hurt a friend, that felt like a strong writing moment. But this is like the only moment I'd say that.
Boredom's phone is getting it's own shout out b/c i found the found allowing. it's a sort of maguffin i guess bc if boredom didn't have the ability to remote control the emotions console then there are moments of the plot that wouldn't have been furthered (at least not in the way they did in the film we have at present). And I guess there is tech littered throughout the mind-space and also the canon betweeen the two movies does prove the narrative can invent whatever it wants to move itself to its end goal, as if the characters truly have no power over Reilly's brain. And maybe... maybe that's something. Maybe it's nothing? It's probably nothing. Still. I guess it wasn't a complete waste of my time. But I also don't think if you read this, you should watch Inside Out 2.
If you have any thoughts on inside out or inside out 2, especially on the lore, then send me an ask on my tumblr gays4vulo@tumblr.com