Inside Out 2

This movie is kind of unfair. How can the viewer watch it with a critical eye when Riley is exactly the kind of girl whom the viewer wishes could be his own daughter? It says here the scale has a thumb on it. No matter—you watch the movie they show you, and in this case, as with its predecessor, you get a pretty good one. Anyone with an ounce of human spirit has to feel sympathy for a young person suffering the pangs of puberty—we’ve all been there—so we can all laugh, cry and cringe as our girl stumbles through one particularly fraught weekend. The Emotions are back and their usual selves, though now augmented by the addition of several newcomers—perhaps even one or two too many new characters, though the story is dominated by Anxiety, so the plot doesn’t really get too crowded. Again we have some very clever visual metaphors for the inside of the human mind, many of which are highlights of the film's mostly gentle humor,  plus at least one visual pun that is, in its place, laugh out loud funny. The only real flaw may be that the characters, who are personifications of Riley’s emotions, do not always stay true throughout to their essential selves (by the end Lewis Black's Anger is uncharacteristically happy and practically gushing). I guess it’s impossible to fully carry the metaphor all the way through, but that’s really just a quibble. You will be okay if you keep this one in the front of your mind; it just might help you build a better you—something a lot of us could work on.

Toy Story 4

I guess there’s a reason why they usually stop movie series at three entries. It becomes impossible to not experience, when watching a fourth installment of a franchise, a sense that you’ve seen all this stuff before—that you are looking at a paper or a picture that has been copied a few times too many, or copied from a copy of a copy. That’s the sense I got watching this film. The familiar characters are there, a somewhat familiar storyline is there—this series has done both new character introductions and finding a long-lost friend in prior sequels—but at this point they just don’t have the same impact as they originally did. Not surprising, really; it requires a ton of fresh creative input to keep old characters and scenarios feeling even relatively fresh, and there just isn’t a lot of vibe that the studio was up to that challenge here. Thus, it was not a surprise that my attention started to wander long before this flick reached its climax, let alone the potentially series-altering denouement. I know they’re planning yet another sequel for this series—perhaps without Hanks, though that issue probably wouldn’t be insurmountable—but I suspect the only thing that will come of the attempt will be further proof of Disney’s current creative bankruptcy. Oh, I suppose I should note that the uncritical among us—like children, the target audience here—will absorb this outing with the same level of pleasure the first three provided. But for the rest of us, I think we should expect a bit more for our time and attention. It just might be time to put away these childish things.

Yoga Hosers

One of the most committed feature-length goofs you’ll ever encounter. Clearly, there was never any intent to make a serious film here, so the viewer has to match the spirit of the piece in order to get the most out of watching it. That calls for viewing this flick with a persistent smirk on your face and not much in the way of critical examination in your mind. For sure, the humor here runs the gamut from silly and clever to breathtakingly stupid, so you really can’t go in looking for greatness. And the missteps in the story, while gargantuan, are ultimately forgivable given the obvious lack of seriousness. (This movie would have played much better if it had been a simple ghost or monster story, or even just a straightforward slasher pic, but the actual backstory is just downright ridiculous and dumb—the sort of thing that happens when you’re overly dedicated to making movies while being totally baked.) All in all, though, if you play it loose and silly—as does everyone in the cast, including title protagonists Harley Quinn Smith and Lily-Rose Depp, who add beaucoup de cuteness to the mix—then you’ll find yourself having a lot of fun with this pic. That is, unless you’re Canadian, in which case you may be mortally offended by the film’s (mostly) gentle but relentless teasing. But the rest of us can just sit back and spend 90 or so minutes enjoying some entertaining if ultimately meaningless fun. And that’s aboot all there is to it.