I am honestly surprised at seeing the amount of high ratings of 9s and 10s in the reviews making me question if we watched the same film or not.
Maybe I'm getting old and I'm not the target audience of these kinds of movies anymore, or maybe I was just too sleepy when watching this, but unlike the first one, I did not like this one much. It is not insultingly bad or anything, after all, I'm giving it an above average rating.
This movie compared to the first doesn't have the soul and emotional connection you'd expect. This movie in my opinion is just another unnecessary sequel solely made for grabbing cash, and cash grab it did.
The first problem with the movie is the pacing. The story is incredibly rushed even though it has the same runtime as the first, so it's weird how everything feels like needed more time to develop, while everything in the first felt adequate and enough. The addition of the new characters definitely needed a lot more time.
At the same time, nothing that interesting happened here in my opinion, and made the whole thing boring for me. The sense of exploration of different parts of Riley's mind from the first movie is gone and the film is more focused on the real-life story, so the whole Joy and the gang going through the mind is just that, a simple road trip story. Nothing interesting or of note happens there. I don't remember a single scene in this movie that stood out to me as interesting or creative at all, while I still remember Bing Bong, them going through that train station or room that changed their animation style, the scene of them messing with Riley's dreams and many more.
Just so much happened in the first film that it feels like that movie was over 2 hours. But I just did not find a single scene in this movie note-worthy.
The next problem for me is that I just don't care about these characters here, especially the new ones. There is no emotional connection, unlike the first movie. The real-life struggles of Riley in the first film were more relatable and the whole Joy realizing Sandness is necessary and the Bing Bong storyline were the soul of that film and made you actually care and have an emotional connection to them. This is nonexistent in this sequel.
It doesn't feel like they had an idea for a story and decided to make a movie about it, it feels more like a studio-mandated sequel that they tried to come up with a story afterward. The plot of this movie is so boring and so few things happen here that it feels like I'm watching Inside Out: The Series and just watching a random episode where Riley needs to get on the cool hockey team.
I understand that someone would like this, especially the younger generation, but what I don't get are the 9s and 10s, because this is so obviously and clearly inferior to the first film in many aspects that I don't understand how someone can say this is on the same level or even better than the first!
Overall, the movie is not that bad if you don't have anything better to watch, but I am disappointed that this movie did nothing for me after going in having seen the high ratings and the reviews. It is an example of an unnecessary cash-grab sequel. Inside Out is one I consider one of Pixar's greats and will rewatch it if I feel like it because it's a really enjoyable, deep, emotional, innovative, creative, and beautiful film. Very rewatchable. But Inside Out 2? I don't think I'll ever rewatch this one, one time was more than enough.
