2024-07-23 12:09:37
The heroine Riley from the animated film There’s a problem in her head. In the sequel to one of Pixar’s biggest commercial and critically acclaimed hits, the little ice hockey lover has already celebrated her 13th birthday, which can be seen not only in her skin. Above all, inside her head flashes a giant red button that says Puberty. And that brings a bunch of new, previously unknown difficulties.
The original 2015 animated film was quite personal for director Pete Docter. The characters embodying the basic set of emotions from joy to sadness, which ran rampant in the head of the child protagonist, were based on real experiences of raising a daughter. And the film was looking for a way to playfully offer adults and their children a conciliatory view of the most common difficulties regarding what it’s like to be a parent on the one hand and a child on the other.
The sequel In the Head 2, directed by Kelsey Mann and shown in Czech cinemas since last Thursday, continues the same. Only this time, other creatures named anxiety, shame, or boredom join the fight in the control center inside Riley’s head. And as it happens in adolescence, they intend to take turns “at the helm” with a much faster cadence.
Riley is a rising hockey star, and attending a three-day camp where she can secure a spot on the high school team is to confirm her success. Just like the success of two best friends.
But the joyful feeling at the very beginning is clouded by the discovery that both girls will go to a different high school than Riley. During the training, the heroine considers, among other things, whether to remain loyal to her loved ones, or to accept an invitation among the best local players. Above all, he must find a way to his new feelings, accept that there is a good person and a bad person in each of us, and find a balance between different types of emotions or temptations.
The Pixar studio is once again looking for ways to use fantastic stories to tell about the most common life situations and experiences that older children, teenagers and adults can identify with. This has always been the company’s greatest strength.
Joy and Anxiety in the Czech version were dubbed by Ivana Korolová and Pavla Gajdošíková. | Photo: Falcon
The effort to accept oneself became the key to the success of her first film Toy Story from 1995. The new In the Head 2 comes to cinemas almost three decades later. And since it reaches Czech distribution with a delay of more than a month compared to the rest of the world, it is already clear that the formula still works. The worldwide sales of the film currently exceed the threshold of 1.4 billion dollars, which translates into 33.4 billion crowns, which makes In the Head 2 the most successful work of Pixar in history and, by overview, the biggest commercial film hit of 2024.
Both parts of the series are remarkable in the way they personify the most common feelings. And what is happening in the mind, often unreflectively, is magnified in fractions of a second or seen from a closer view with the help of the crazy escapades of the characters, whose appearance, voice and behavior perfectly describe the most basic emotions.
In the second part, however, this trick leads to what was already a certain difficulty in the first part. The running around of emotions in Riley’s head is a bit reminiscent of an episode from the once popular animated series Once Upon a Time… a life that used characters representing, for example, red blood cells to teach children biology.
A slightly instructive way to prevent the battles of feelings inside a teenage person might not be a defect in itself. But the chosen method leads to the fact that the creators do not need any overly complex plot. All it takes is one small conflict at the event, which, however, represents a milestone in her life so far for the thirteen-year-old girl.
Many coming-of-age films are set in a similarly tight space and time. And everything important comes from the small interactions of the heroes.
Opposites Attract. Joy was spoken by Ivana Korolová, Sadness by Zuzana Slavíková. | Photo: Falcon
In Chapter 2, the way the events inside the mind alternate with Riley’s actual stay at the hockey camp, paradoxically at times separates the audience from the most intimate connection with the protagonist. Although everything is told from her perspective, so the other characters have a minimum of space, unfortunately, sometimes the long journey of Joy, Sadness and others in the slightly bizarre world inside the head rather takes away from the real experiences of Riley, rather than strengthening them.
In its strongest moments, Pixar was able to blend the worlds of adults and children. While some animated family films have often separated scenes and moments aimed at children and those that wink at an older audience, Pixar has often managed to connect the two, touching on melancholy moments while joyfully frolicking like a kid in the middle of the playroom.
The In the Head series tries to do the same thing, but it doesn’t always work. In addition, conflicts between emotions are often too costly for the narrative – surely, for example, the creators do not think that anxiety would first appear in the heroine’s mind with the arrival of puberty.
Even so, in the more successful scenes, it is possible to capture how these new feelings take over, how the children’s world expands and complicates.
There is still a notable family title in Head 2. In the best moments, it really accurately captures the huge emotional upheavals that every teenager faces and that every parent, who has somewhat forgotten about these periods in their own lives, tries to empathize with at the same moment.
At the same time, however, the film confirms what has been true for Pixar throughout the last decade: it does best with audiences when it makes sequels and recycles its own ideas.
Film
In head 2
Directed by: Kelsey Mann
Falcon, Czech premiere on July 18.