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Inside Out 2 Is Another Product of the Pixar Slump
The animation giant goes back to the well of its 2015 coming-of-age hit, with less-than-joyful results.
Filmmaker and chief creative officer Pete Docter made headlines last month thanks to a line in a Bloomberg Businessweek feature about how, going forward, “the studio’s movies should be less a pursuit of any director’s catharsis and instead speak to a commonality of experience.” That was interpreted, understandably, as a refutation of the company’s recent push toward more diverse characters and creators. Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) are expressive and goofy and have the texture of muppets, something the new film underscores with the doll-like consistency of their hair and the fuzziness of their outlines. This is even more true of the new emotions that join and temporarily overthrow them — Anxiety (Maya Hawke), who has the look of Pepe the King Prawn, Envy (Ayo Edebiri), her diminutive sidekick, Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), who’s pink and massive and always trying to disappear into his hoodie, and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who slumps languidly over her phone.
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