Pixar. 2024. Comedy. 96 mins.
Grade: 3 out of 4
At the end of 2015’s Inside Out, Joy (Amy Poehler), the blue-haired leader of the personified emotions that live in the head of pre-teen hockey fanatic Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) says, “things couldn’t be better. After all, Riley’s 12 now. What could happen?” The answer, of course, is that 13 could happen but, in a world where kids usually grow up so fast, it took Riley nine years to age 12 months. Hence Inside Out’s belated sequel, Inside Out 2. The follow-up, while ripe with possibility considering the zigzagging, confusing and comically tragic flood of new and strange feelings that come with puberty, hardly seems necessary. Inside Out, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, was such a triumphant example of conceptual and abstract art Trojan-horsing itself into mainstream cinema that a sequel risked feeling mercenary, being markedly inferior and devaluing the original. So forgive us for not trusting in Pixar given its wobbly record of late. And yet, we can happily report, these fears are mostly unfounded. While Toy Story 2 remains the pinnacle of Pixar sequels, Inside Out 2 extends the first film’s themes and ideas with a psychologically attuned, if broader and more eager to please, account of the confusing new emotions that teens struggle to manage when trying to establish their sense of self.
These new feelings are difficult to juggle not just for Riley but for returning writer Meg LeFauve (co-writing with Dave Holstein). With the five OG emotions joined by four new ones, the film often feels overstuffed with characters rendering it more plot heavy and mechanical than the already quite busy original. That said, it’s a kick to see the gang back together. Joy (Poehler), Fear (Tony Hale taking over for the original’s Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black, oddly muted), Disgust (Liza Lapira filling in for Mindy Kaling), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) continue manning the console in Riley’s (Kensington Tallman) head. She’s firmly adjusted to life in San Francisco where she indulges in her love of hockey and looks forward to attending a three-day hockey camp with besties Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green).
LeFauve uses the hockey camp to introduce new childhood emotions that are easily digestible, ripe for humor, and universal to the teen experience. Plus, she comes up with clever ways to incorporate them and, refreshingly, none of them involve boys. What triggers the arrival of Riley’s new emotional interlopers is her desire to simultaneously land a spot on the hockey team and befriend revered cool-kid Valentina (Lilimar Hernandez) at the expense of Grace and Bree. Part of the brilliance of Inside Out is its acknowledgement that all emotions, even negative ones like sadness, are crucial components of a healthy mental makeup. Here, all the new emotions have negative connotations which opens up plenty of avenues for humor and the kind of teen angst that can’t be alleviated by Randy Newman singing “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” Still, the movie barely has enough bandwidth to accommodate all its newcomers. Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (the cleverly cast Adèle Exarchopoulos) are mostly there to drop the occasional one-liner and guarantee a more starry voice cast.
Instead director Kelsey Mann (the bad film The Good Dinosaur) expends most of his energy on Riley’s significant new emotion: Anxiety (a terrific Maya Hawke) is a wild eyed combination of Muppet and side character from a Wallace and Gromit short. Taking over a command center newly expanded to control Riley’s puberty and new feelings, Anxiety is a wide enough construct to accommodate almost all of Riley’s negative actions. In trying to fit in, she says whatever will ingratiate herself to her fancy new friends, and she’s even down with some late night breaking-and-entering to see what the coach really thinks of her. The film’s only truly brilliant moment comes when Riley avoids a social pitfall by pretending she hates her favorite boy band which creates an enormous avalanche in her subconscious dubbed a “sarchasm.” This reminder that sarcasm has a more destructive effect on the deliverer than the receiver becomes further proof that Inside Out 2 works best in the details. Especially since its plot is not much different from that of the original: Joy (here joined by Fear, Anger and Sadness) is once again excommunicated from the command center and must once again work her way back to save the day, this time because Riley has been overtaken by Anxiety. Voyaging through the colorfully conceptual landscape (the lighting and textures never cease to amaze), they encounter clever supporting players like an old school videogame character named Lance Slashblade (Yong Yea) whose killer move becomes an effective running gag, and Poochy (James Austin Johnson) a yellow fanny pack from Riley’s favorite pre-school cartoon that contains a bottomless well of TNT.
The biggest knock against Inside Out 2 is that Inside Out already exists, denying us the pleasure of discovery and surprise that came from its moving expansion of Pixar’s long running thematic concerns. Having the sequel take place during the onset of Riley’s puberty is eminently sensible if a bit obvious, requiring more than just a refashioning of the first film’s call for healthy emotional processing, this time for a slightly older audience. But nothing here matches the tearjerking heights of Bing Bong’s fade-into-oblivion from the first film. In fact, Inside Out 2, while a worthy sequel that’s better than expected, still emits an ever-so-slight whiff of bet-hedging. The first film took most of the chances and was justifiably rewarded. The sequel finds new avenues to explore but in a more crowd-pleasing, less challenging vein. And even if that engenders some disappointment, it’s still good enough to elicit one key emotion from a satisfied viewer: Relief.