Inside Out 2 (2024)

Director: Kelsey Mann

Cast: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I felt like I saw the trailer last summer about 150 times, but have yet to get around to it until now.

Did I Like It: There’s a certain amount of inevitability about the movie. The original Inside Out (2015) was such a uniquely clever idea, and all came to the ominous conclusion that puberty was rapidly coming down the pike for Riley (Tallman, replacing Kaitlyn Dias). The audience starts to write the sequel in their own head. There’s not much here that isn’t covered by those passing thoughts as we were leaving the theater after the first film.

New emotions are an interesting layer, to be sure. I may just have a problem believing that any child of the twenty-first century only starts to experience Anxiety (Hawke), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) in the summer before they go to High School, but maybe I’m in the minority there.

The thing I’m most delighted by is the eventual fate of the aforementioned Anxiety. A simpler film would be content to make Anxiety into a villain that must be vanquished for all time. I know plenty of people who treat their own anxiety like that, and it more often than not renders them into something between a sociopath and a mere bore. Here, Anxiety is relegated to another part of the tableau. Anxiety can run away with the whole show and is inherently explosive and unpredictable, but then again so are any number of fuels we might use. Anxiety doesn’t have to bring down the entire operation. It doesn’t have to lead to a never ending chorus of “I’m not good enough.” It can—when properly harnessed—lead one to try to do better.

Lightyear (2022)

Director: Angus MacLane

Cast: Chris Evans, Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, Taika Waititi

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: The movie’s pitch is an intriguing one. But can this movie really feel as if it came from 1995? Largely, no. For every moment where Lightyear blows on his autopilot cartridge to get it to reset, there are more than enough moments where the film is squarely in 2022. No, I’m not talking about Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) having a same-sex partner. That almost hints that the world of the 1990s in Toy Story (1995) is actually a better version of our world, one where that sort of thing wouldn’t matter*.

I’m more talking about the digital HUD displays and the films need to swing back and forth between IMAX and regular 2:35:1 aspect ratios. That was not a 1995 film thing to do. It has a tag scene—and an incredibly perfunctory one, at that—which doesn’t feel like something that happened before Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). There is very little about the film that doesn’t loudly proclaim its status as a product of its true time.

And yet, there are moments where it reaches for that quality. It is almost as if that pitch was far more pure in some stage of the film’s development, and cooler, more conservative heads at both Disney and Pixar prevailed to make it more pedestrian. The film couldn’t exist in a world where it could be anything other than  a simple story with a convoluted time travel gimmick at its heart…

…which, in and of itself would have been the exact kind of movie I would have loved in 1995. Something more than I originally thought of that original promise may have survived to the final film.

* Although the implications that Andy never bothered to get a Hawthorne (either of them) action figure—or that the toy company never produced one—is kind of a bummer. The idea that talking Sox (Sohn) toys weren’t the single most popular toy of that world’s 1995 also beggars belief.

Coco (2017)

Director: Lee Unkrich

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I can’t even claim that COVID has thrown my more recent movie consumption out of whack. This one came from the before times, and I’ve had a Disney+ subscription since halfway through the first season of The Mandalorian. I’m behind on all things Pixar and it’s making me feel weird.

Did I Like It: There’s more than enough written about Pixar’s unique ability to make people cry within the first few minutes of a movie. I don’t want to talk about that, mainly because its been talked about death, but really mainly because I’m a robot and my creators forgot to build me with the ability to have my emotions seep out of my eyes*.

What I do want to talk about is the unique ability of Pixar movies to confound expectations in their storytelling. At about the five-minute mark in this film—just at the crest of Lora’s first set of tears—I felt like I was going to be done with the film. Ernesto de la Cruz (Bratt) is Miguel’s (Gonzalez) great-great-grandfather and the one excised from the family history. I’m one of those people that write the rest of the film far too quickly, and the Pixar folks see me coming a mile away every time. There’s a perfectly acceptable kids movie filled with Day of the Dead imagery and filled with Latin music about embracing your true destiny and bring music back to your begrudging family. This movie is ready to go straight for the throat and expose the pulsating jugular and try to say something about how long and anger can be so interchangeable as to practically be quantum states.

*Which wouldn’t be a terribly pitch for a new Pixar movie, while we’re on the topic…

Incredibles 2 (2018)

Director: Brad Bird

Cast: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Samuel L. Jackson

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Not sure why I went a whole year missing the film, but it a year that also included Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), I can see how things might have gotten a little crowded.

Did I Like It: Sure. Here’s the thing, the film is absolutely well-made and Brad Bird continues to cement his reputation as a first among equals in the Pixar pantheon. The 60s-tinged timelessness has not lost an ounce of its luster from the original film, the voice acting is—as always—spectacular, and the story follows that sacred rule of sequeldom: don’t let up on the pace.

But as I’m watching it, I wonder if I am less enveloped by this film as I was the original—or Bird’s other Pixar entry Ratatouille (2007)—as I become consumed by such an obtuse line of thinking about what is being presented to me, that I may be forcing myself outside of the film for much of the runtime

So, what’s that obtuse thought? I’m so glad you asked.

The film is the most succinct repudiation of Ayn Randianism and Objectivism that we are likely to find. 

Let me finish.

In years past, there has been some thinking that Bird was at least marginally sympathetic to Rand’s views. He has dismissed the idea as lazy criticism, and while I agree, that non-denial doesn’t exactly negate the interpretation. Especially in the original The Incredibles (2004), Bird’s stories are peppered with characters who have exceptional talents, but are put upon by a society less special than them. If that’s not a template for a Randian hero, then I don’t know what is.

Here, though the Parr family is still yearning to live in a world that will let them be who they were born to be, but things are quite a bit different. It is only when the villain of the piece, the Screenslaver (Catherine Keener, although I suppose that is something of a spoiler) puts Mr. Incredible (Nelson, who with John Ratzenberger might be the only people in this process who would be sympathetic to Rand), Elastigirl (Hunter), and Frozone (Jackson) under mind control that they declare their exceptionalism has made the world treat them unfairly, and that their revenge will be the removal of that specialness.

Furthermore, once things are back the way they should be, Elastigirl—the true hero of the piece—saves the villain regardless of her contempt for Supers. This film makes the point that exceptionalism should be nurtured in people, but the exceptional should use their abilities in service of society, even when that society doesn’t appreciate them.

Something tells me Rand would probably have a problem with that last thought.

Inside Out (2015)

Director: Pete Docter

Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Lewis Black

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, although I didn’t see it in the theater, which is becoming a recurring trend with me and Pixar films. 

Did I Like It: Pixar takes such delicate care with their films, that they have yet to make an unwatchable film. There’s too much energy and craft on display to fall short of that standard. The true measure of their success is whether or not it sticks with you like a gut punch (a la the Toy Story series) or end up insubstantial confections that begin to disappear the moment the credits begin (a la the Cars series).

I can happily report that this film resides in the prior category. At their best, Pixar films have an ability to convert an otherwise banal situation (checking your bag at the airport, moving, or bedtime) into stories of epic proportions. Synthesizing what feels like an entire lifetime of reading about Junigan archetypes* into what amounts to a road movie, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and the other emotions in the head of eleven-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) haphazardly find their way to work together more… efficiently feels like the wrong word, as the most efficient manner for them to conduct their mission would be to have Joy run the show. Instead, they must realize that they are an interdependent system. Each will perish without the others.

It might seem like a simplistic system, narrowing all of human emotions—even for the adults—down to five emotions, but when the borders begin to blur, the story really cuts through and sticks with you long after its over. The happiest memories are usually a response to the saddest, so is the opposite, on and on until a complex human being is created. It makes one think about their own core memories, and the continuum of how one feels about all of those key moments. 

Thus, it’s one of the best Pixar films (and that is pretty impressive company to be among), and worth immediate viewing if you haven’t already done so.

*I honestly have no idea if the film has any relation to true Jungian psychology, but it feels like the intelligent thing to type there, doesn’t it?