The title of the movie is perfect. It’s more of the same. Which is still very good, but lacking in anything novel.

I was also disappointed by inside out 2. I thought it followed the story beats of the first one a bit too closely. Flow was the better film.

This is my point though. Inside Out 2 suffered from high expectations. If Pixar never existed and Inside Out 2 came from an unknown studio it would have blown you away.

Exactly. Pixar is somewhat a victim of its own success, but in this case Inside Out 2 is just Inside Out again - none of the additions or developments are really surprising.

And that's not bad! Sometimes you really do just want more of the same - after all, many wildly successful TV shows are just the same story, told differently each episode.

Flow wildly beat expectations which already gives it a leg up, but it was "new and weird" enough that I bet more of the reviewers actually watched it vs Inside Out 2 or other big-name movies.

Even the tagline of "feature length movie with no dialogue that's actually good" is enough to get people interested.

Eh not for me. It was just meh, nothing to do with expectations, which were already low from my side.