Inside Out 2 review – The Pixar sequel brings back emotions but doesn’t have the heart of the original
INSIDE OUT 2
(PG) 96mins
★★★☆☆
IT can get emotional seeing a sequel to a film you love.
You want the characters to be just as entertaining and engaging as the first time — and for the story to bring the same sense of wonder and elation.
Oh, and because it is a Pixar movie, the inevitable tears.
So the sentimental bar was high when going to watch this cast of, well, emotions again, nine years after the original.
We meet a now 13-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman) during a high-tempo game of ice hockey, along with the crew of feelings who live in her brain.
Boss of all the feelings, Joy (Amy Poehler), and her colleagues Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, have been running a successful operation making sure young Riley is living her best life in perfect balance.
She is kind, empathetic and has a couple of geeky best pals.
But then one morning in emotions HQ, an alarm goes off. It is furiously loud and reads: PUBERTY.
This opens the door to a new gang of feelings arriving in Riley’s mind.
They are Anxiety (Maya Hawke) Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui — the French personification of teenage apathy.
Yup, she’s a teenager all right.
Soon, the new gang are taking over Riley’s mind and when she goes to hockey camp, she becomes a very different child, falling out with her friends and showing off.
Soon, within Riley’s head, the old team and newbies are clashing, with the former finding themselves shut out completely.
They once again go on a long trek through Riley’s stacks of memories and try to bring back important ones before the poor kid gives in to the grip of young angst.
Many sequels with high expectations hanging over them can often come across as that difficult second album.
And here, the story is more complex.
It feels like it has gone through too many cooks and the ingredients are less appetising, getting very complicated and yet strangely slow.
There is a scene inside a bank safe that runs for far too long and the jokes are not as clever as the OG.
Of course it is tricky doing a follow on from such a vibrant, bright idea about the characters that live inside a girl’s head — in the first film the concept itself was enough.
But this time there’s not quite enough Pixar magic to make my emotions run wild.
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FREUD’S LAST SESSION
(12A) 108mins
★★★★☆
THIS fascinating film imagines a fictional meeting between the famously atheist godfather of psychoanalysis, and author C.S Lewis, a devout Anglican.
It is September 1939 and Hitler’s invasion of Poland triggers World War Two.
Having fled the Nazis and his native Austria a year earlier, an ailing Sigmund Freud (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is living in London.
He is paid a visit by self- effacing Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis (Matthew Goode) and as they spend a rainy afternoon exchanging opposing views on the existence of a higher power, both are forced to revisit painful moments from their past.
“I’m a passionate disbeliever who is obsessed with belief,” utters Freud.
If this is the sort of intellectual stimulation you are after, then look no further than this gorgeously acted and hugely entertaining film that is almost a two-hander.
Hopkins and Goode give two understated yet im- pressively precise performances.
We have no idea if two of the greatest minds of the 20th century ever met in real life, but that is all beside the point.
The result is a film that manages to be full of tenderness and clever repartee.
TREASURE
(12A) 112mins
★☆☆☆☆
THERE are some films where you hope the best bits have somehow got lost in the editing suite.
This painfully clunky adaptation of Lily Brett’s autobiographical novel, Too Many Men, is clearly made with hope and affection, though that doesn’t come across as it should.
It’s 1991 and Ruth (Lena Dunham) is a New York journalist who has come to Poland to understand her family history.
Her dad Edek (Stephen Fry) joins her, but carries the weight of his memories of his treatment during the Holocaust and the recent death of his wife.
The pair have a strained relationship and often clash when going on the excursion, including visiting Edek’s old family factory, which still holds many of his possessions.
Fry’s performance plods slowly along and his sweet innocence and his dodgy Polish accent begin to grate.
Dunham is brittle and uneasy in the role, playing the angry American who finds great fury in shuffling her kindly dad around.
There’s not much chemistry between the two actors, even though they’re meant to be related.
A great shame that this important story is not given the care it deserves.