Weekend Watch - Inside Out 2

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating, review, and recommendation. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Pixar’s latest theatrical release (their first since Lightyear), Inside Out 2, the sequel to 2015’s Best Animated Feature winner. The sequel sees the return of voice actors Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan as the voices of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Mom, and Dad, joined this time by Kensington Tallman as Riley, Maya Hawke as Anxiety, Liza Lapira as Disgust, Tony Hale as Fear, and Ayo Edebiri as Envy, just to name a few of the new names and faces. The film follows Riley and her emotions as they move from childhood into adolescence with the complications of starting high school, fitting in, and puberty bringing a whole new set of issues to reckon with. The film opened this weekend to relatively positive reviews. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: B; it’s not saying anything wrong; I just don’t know that what it’s saying carries the weight that I want it to.

Should you Watch This Film? If you want a good movie to see with your kids or are a fan of the first, this is worth checking out. Otherwise, you can definitely wait to stream this one later on when you’re catching up on all the Oscar nominees.

Why?

                Inside Out 2 does a lot of things right as a sequel, building on the world of the last film while telling an original story with a positive message, memorable characters, and a few good laughs. Unfortunately, it also suffers as a product of the current Disney/Pixar machine (the first after the infamous announcement that they’ll be moving away from autobiographical stories like those in Turning Red and Luca), and in its quest for “universality” (whatever that means), loses most of the emotional (ironic, I know) resonance that they’ve become so well known for. I felt more emotional connection to the characters and stories of every Pixar film since 2020 (besides Lightyear) than I did watching Inside Out 2. They’ve given us an important message with solid characters that somehow manages to avoid actually getting the audience at all invested in the characters that they’re watching on the screen. The film’s story feels like it’s been designed around getting to a couple of key points in the film’s third act, and the result is a sense of manufactured emotion rather than genuine connection (unlike the authenticity of Turning Red, Luca, Soul, Onward, and even the first Inside Out).

                Now I know you’re asking how this film got even a B rating after all this negativity, and that’s because it really is a well-made film. The animation remains beautiful both in the real world and in Riley’s mind with some new techniques on display that really impressed me and made for some fun world-building and comedy. The new characters add some fun new wrinkles to the world of these films, with both Anxiety and Envy being the standouts. There’s a few jokes in here that really work well, even if too many feel more tailored to the younger audience that filled my theater, who for the most part weren’t laughing as much as I might’ve expected. The sound design and Andrea Datzman’s music do a solid job of creating tension and atmosphere. Even the film’s message is one that checks that Pixar box of being relevant for both adults and children – that anxiety is something that can easily come to define us if we don’t monitor how we’re framing our situation, and that’ll always lead to disaster. All of that speaks to the success of the new Pixar method in theory. On paper, this is an excellent film, but in practice, it’s missing that personal element that’s made modern Pixar so successful – the autobiographical stories of Turning Red and Luca, the family narrative of Coco, the friendship narrative of Toy Story 4, etc. Inside Out 2 tries to create those personal moments by telling a story about anxiety, growing up, and friendship, but none of the beats of those stories feel authentic enough (besides an excellently realistic panic attack) to create the resonance that it wants to – maybe that’s also because most of the development in this story happens to Riley herself rather than the emotions in her mind, who are supposed to be the main characters.

                Inside Out 2 is an excellently crafted animated film that unfortunately fails to deliver on what people actually love about the other Pixar films – authentic emotion, which is unfortunately ironic for this sequel. It looks good, sounds good, and even feels pretty good, but it fails to deliver in its biggest moments. If you liked the first film, you’ll probably still enjoy this one, but I don’t know that it’s a film that everyone needs to go see immediately in theaters.

Weekend Watch - Bottoms

                Welcome back to the Weekend Watch where each week we take a look at a new piece of film or television media and give it a rating and review. This week’s topic, as voted by the blog’s Instagram followers, is Bottoms, the high school comedy from Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, starring Sennott alongside Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, and Marshawn Lynch. The film follows lesbian best friends (Sennott and Edebiri) as they start a fight club to try to hook up with their crushes. It opened last weekend to wide acclaim (critical and fan-based) and jumped immediately onto Letterboxd’s list of the top-rated 250 narrative feature films on their site. Let’s get into it.

Letter Grade: A; this is legitimately the most laugh-out-loud funny film I’ve seen in theaters in a long time, and with the addition of some solid performances and writing in between jokes, it’s an excellent film.

Review:

                 Bottoms puts together a perfect blend of quirkiness, heart, high school hijinks, and pure comedy to insert itself into the conversation for the best modern teen comedy. The comedic performances from Edebiri, Sennott, and Lynch stand out from the crowd with perfect timing, playing excellently off each other in what ends up being a brilliantly paced, quick hitting high school comedy. Sennott and Seligman put together a fun premise with memorable characters and goofy situations that feels unquestionably original and fresh, aggressively self-aware and thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.

                Ayo Edebiri is in the midst of a huge come-up right now, with voice performances in the Ninja Turtles and Spider-Verse films that came out this summer, an Emmy nomination for her performance in The Bear, and now the co-lead in one of the most popular comedies of the year so far. Her turn here as Josie is probably the most complex character, and she plays the awkward but driven young woman charmingly. Rachel Sennott follows up her critically acclaimed 2020 partnership with Seligman in Shiva Baby with yet another mildly unhinged, uproariously funny turn as PJ, the ringleader of the impromptu girls’ fight club. Marshawn Lynch is the not-too-surprising stand-out of the supporting characters, playing the girls’ history teacher, Mr. G, arguably the film’s funniest character, holding his own in the film across from these two incredibly talented actresses, even outshining them in some scenes.

                While I am very aware that I am not Seligman and Sennott’s target audience as a straight white guy, I still found their film to be highly enjoyable and never unapproachable in its humor or storyline. The caricaturized version of high schoolers that they present in the cheerleaders, football players, outsiders, and nerds makes for a quality satire of the high school experience, specifically for girls, but one that is easily recognizable for anyone who’s been to an American high school in at least the last twenty years. The story of girls with crushes looking for love is nothing new, but its execution with the comedy, situations, and ultimate over-the-top climax that brings it all together is on a level of originality that you just rarely see in your mainstream modern comedies.

                Bottoms is a refreshingly original take on the high school comedy genre, bolstered even higher by some solid comedic performances, excellent humor, and a story that never feels tired and never loses its pacing, making this one of the must-see films of 2023. Seligman, Sennott, and Edebiri represent a talented group of rising stars in modern Hollywood, and I’m excited for them to have this film under their belt as a classic comedy to look back on as their success continues to climb. Marshawn Lynch might be the most unironically funny athlete-turned-actor to date, and he gets to put that on full display here; I look forward to seeing even more of that. The originality and representation in Bottoms also goes a long way in moving the film industry in a positive direction as well. All-around, this film represents a huge step in the right direction for the American film industry, and I’m glad that it exists and that I got to see it this weekend.