The older you are, the more important Inside Out 2 gets

polygon.com:

Inside Out 2 is taking the sluggish 2024 box office by storm, having made more than $1.2 billion dollars worldwide in just a few weeks of release. This kind of major financial success generally only comes to “four-quadrant movies,” films that appeal to the four major box office demos: men and women, both above and under age 25. While Pixar Animation Studios’ latest does fit that bill, I came out of the theaterfirmly convinced that, while this film is relatable and enjoyable for most kids of most ages, it hits even harder if you’re an adult.

I took my 7-year-old niece to Inside Out 2, and she loved it. A media-literate gremlin who spends much of her free time robbing fictional banks in Roblox’s Brookhaven, rewatching Pixar’s Turning Red, or mesmerized by YouTubers unboxing their latest Pop Mart hauls, she knows how to dissect a fictional narrative, even if she doesn’t fully realize that yet. She chose Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) as her favorite character in Inside Out 2, and she laughed at many of the movie’s jokes. She related to a lot of the interpersonal drama hitting Riley, the now-13-year-old girl at the center of the movie: My niece just started school last year, so, like Riley, she’s going through a lot of social changes. And she has a teenage brother, so it was helpful to see a straightforward depiction of how becoming a teenager can affect someone’s emotional landscape.

Like many kids I know, my niece is desperate for information that might help her understand the world adults live in. She plays Brookhaven as a way to cosplay adulthood, decorating her house and driving around town in a limo, unbound by realities like financial stress or a full-time job. I think this quest for knowledge about adulthood is driven by a kind of anxiety that many contemporary kids feel, an unconscious belief that if she figures it all out before she turns 18, perhaps she will be able to avoid some of the struggles she recognizes in the adults around her. For her, Inside Out 2 wa