A film about the ruinous stranglehold anxiety can have on the psyche? That might be a little too apt a subject for Pixar ’s latest release. It’s been declared, by some, that the studio is on its last legs. The last few years saw three tentpole originals funnelled squanderously onto Disney+ during the height of the pandemic.
Conceptually confusing Toy Story spin-off Lightyear died in cinemas – but Elemental , an original story about a culture-clash romance, was a sleeper hit. The studio’s inexplicable takeaway: more sequels, fewer personal stories. It’s another gloomy reminder that the people who hold the purse strings all share a single brain cell, and it’s put the incoming Inside Out 2 in an uncomfortable position: if it flounders, Pixar, already recently hit by a devastating round of layoffs, may be toast.
If it succeeds, the studio will be forever committed to churning out Toy Story sequels. (Brace yourself for a barrell-scraping spin-off exploring the inner turmoil of John Ratzenburger’s talking piggy bank.) And yet, the reality of Inside Out 2 doesn’t comfortably fit either of those narratives.
It’s a lovely sequel, without a trace of cynicism to it, that also by necessity lacks a little of the freshness and originality of 2022’s Turning Red or 2021’s Luca . Out of all of Pixar’s films, Inside Out is admittedly the most primed for a revisit. Set within the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, it follows a gang of anthropomorphised emotions tha.