Inside Out 2

 

Score:  B

Directed by Kelsey Mann

Starring Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, et al.

Running time: 96 minutes

Rated PG

Long Story Short:  Inside Out 2 brings Pixar back to the world of one of its biggest original hits, this time with the Emotions contending with an adolescent host.  Like the first movie, there are plenty of clever ideas and gags, but the sequel falls well short of the masterful 2015 film.  It's just too overstuffed, and doesn't bring enough freshness to the world despite the new Emotions and real world setting.  Still, it's a perfectly good option, especially for families looking for a summer theater trip.

The Emotions of young Riley (Tallman) - Joy (Poehler), Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust - continue to steer the girl through life, which is now entering the treacherous high school stage.  Riley loves hockey, and she attends an important camp with her two best friends; her performance at the camp could determine whether she makes the high school team.  Joy and the others feel confident that they can help Riley succeed, but their usual directions start to go awry - and they also find new company in Riley's head, led by a determined Anxiety (Hawke).  The Emotions must act fast to prevent the hockey camp from becoming a train wreck for Riley, and also work out their own new roles in her life.

Inside Out 2 is a fine animated film, but it is a pale follow-up to a Pixar classic, trying to stuff in too many themes and characters with not enough originality.  The structure is quite similar to the first Inside Out with the action playing out in two areas: Riley's real human life and the anthropomorphized Emotions working inside Riley "HQ": control rooms, vast memory vaults, etc.  I would have expected to like the sequel to follow the original's successful formula, but it just didn't work as well - primarily because it's overstuffed in both "worlds": more time on Riley's life, and a new batch of Emotions.  Those colorful beings are still fun, with all the originals returning.  Unfortunately, two of them have new voice actors, which I found pretty distracting (Hader and Kaling had been perfect for Fear and Disgust).  Familiarity brings fondness, but the filmmakers also realized they needed to spice up Riley's internal world with some new Emotions.  Anxiety and Embarrassment are particularly good but again, it just ends up being too much, a dilemma for the film.  Meanwhile, though it makes sense to see how the battle of the Emotions is playing out in Riley's life, her hockey camp story is fairly bland.  Partly this is the difficulty of aligning real events to match the internal work of Emotions but there are some highlights, too, including Riley's sudden overreactions to the Emotions' prompts (thanks, puberty).

The overarching genius of the original Inside Out was in the way that it literally connected traditional movie action/plot to fundamental human psychology.  Somehow, it also melded all the intricate details with a cohesive message (i.e., the importance of sadness).  The sequel has some great psychological and human themes as well - but maybe too many of them.  I really liked the final theme, of humanity's complexity - we each hold many, often contradictory, feelings and qualities and have to balance them, but it's also what makes us resilient.  The other ideas leading up to it are thoughtful, too, but it's so much that the impact of each diminishes.  It feels odd writing this, but there's almost too much dialogue here - the film could have done more showing and less telling.

***

Since Inside Out was one of my favorite Pixar movies, I really looked forward to the sequel.  I enjoyed it but, maybe inevitably, was disappointed.  I should also note that I was feeling pretty tired during a good portion of the movie, so that could well have affected the way I felt about it.  Unless a second viewing completely changes my mind, though, I am pretty convinced of one thing: Pixar needs to get back to making original movies and keep the sequels to a minimum.  Last year's Elemental was a great example, I loved it - unfortunately, because it didn't do well at the box office, Pixar is probably going to lean even more into the sequels (especially now that Inside Out 2 is over $400 million in just two weeks).  I want to emphasize: this is not a bad movie by any means and, as with just about all Pixar movies, both kids and adults will enjoy it.  But I am a bit depressed by what the box office returns for the last two Pixar releases will mean for the creative direction of Hollywood for the foreseeable future.

* By http://www.impawards.com/2024/inside_out_two_ver2.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75269099

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

 

Score:  A-

Directed by George Miller

Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

Running time: 148 minutes

Rated R

Long Story Short:  Furiosa is a high-quality follow-up to the 2015 post-apocalyptic action thriller, Fury Road.  Newcomers Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth are steady, but the real star is director George Miller's degraded desert world that nevertheless teems with the desperate remnants of humanity.  They chase and slay one another in vintage internal combustion vehicles, keeping the audience rapt in scenes that come up with one marvel after another.  Highly recommended for theater viewing.

Decades into the future, Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland; Australia, the setting of the film, is now almost entirely desert except for a few miraculous oases.  Raiders stumble across one such oasis, and a young girl, Furiosa, tries to stop them from escaping and revealing the secret of her land to the many savage gangs that stalk the desert.  Instead, she is taken prisoner to one of the gangs, the Horde, led by Dementus (Hemsworth).  As she struggles to survive, Furiosa meets others in the ruthless, "mad" desert world and finds that she has the strength to hold her own.  Furiosa blends in with the gang, proving her value, but all the time waiting for the chance to escape and return to her beloved home.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a thrilling, well-made action movie; while it lacks the elegant simplicity of 2015's Fury Road, it is still a worthy prequel to that visually gritty, unique movie.  Furiosa portrays the growth of its main character from an innocent girl living in the sanctuary of the Green Place, right up to the events of Fury Road, where she has become a fully battle- and tragedy-hardened woman.  That's about fifteen years, quite a difference from the few days over which all of Fury Road takes place; this has both positive and negative effects.  The best part of Fury Road comes over fully intact, however: the action.  Once again, it is quite violent but with relatively little gore, and more importantly, it is such creative and intense work in an entirely unique setting.  Most of it involves fighting among vehicles driven at break-neck speeds, from motorcycles to souped-up, broken down cars to improvised gliders to the mammoth "War Rig".  There is surely a good bit of CGI involved, but there is also plenty of  incredible stunt work as fighters jump from vehicle to vehicle and pulverize each other in all sorts of ways.  Frequently, the action appears "sped up", the frame rate increasing to make it look almost cartoonish; this heightens the fantasy of it while keeping the grittiness and also symbolizes the brief, fragile reality of life in this desert world.  The movie's extended sequences are by far its best parts: the opening, with its hunting of raiders and subsequent escape; a War Rig chase scene reminiscent of Fury Road; and Furiosa (and her ally's) main showdown with Dementus, a particularly long, brutal showcase.  These scenes absolutely capture your entire attention and hold you in the moment, which is especially impressive for how long they last - they're worth the price of admission by themselves.

Alas, not everything in Furiosa is as good as its action.  The characters are fine - not classic, but worthy of following through the film.  Taylor-Joy's Furiosa does a good job following up Theron from Fury Road; neither of them are recognizable, from their bald heads and grime-covered skin to the hardened edges they present.  Taylor-Joy seems a bit too slight for this brutal world, but she still does well with the physical work and it feels believable enough.  Hemsworth is a very engaging antagonist, at least in the first third of the movie: while he's crazy and ruthless, he somehow also manages to often be funny and give off traces of sympathetic humanity.  There are other characters with lines, too, but to be honest, the waves of deadly, anonymous desert pirates are the third most interesting role.  As mentioned, the extended scenes are great; however, the movie's longer timeline results in a bit of disjointed unevenness.  The movie attempts to expand and further mythologize the Mad Max world, which is intriguing at times but overall is pretty difficult to follow who is who and why they do what they do.  The ending is also a bit of a letdown, largely because of how quickly and suddenly (to me) things wrap up and before you know it, we have the inevitable final Furiosa-Dementus confrontation.  It's at least quieter than most action movie finales, but I wanted more for Furiosa.  Still, what a ride!

***

Now this is more like the summer movie season starter I usually expect!  It made a paltry $26 million in its opening weekend, though, despite a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score and the popularity of Fury Road.  C'mon, people, this is the kind of movie you have to see in the theater!  Anyway, it's interesting that this is the second desert-based action epic I've seen this year, following Dune: Part Two from the spring (which was properly rewarded for its quality and entertainment value, as it's currently the year's top-grossing movie).  I'm finally becoming a little more discriminant about the sequels and reboots I will go see, but this was a no-brainer.  Hopefully more filmmakers will continue to bring this kind of creativity and intensity to the movie theater.  Until next time!

* By IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76616879