INSIDE OUT 2 (2024) review
written by: Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein
produced by: Mark Nielsen
directed by: Kelsey Mann
rated: PG (for some thematic elements)
runtime: 96 min.
U.S. release date: June 14, 2024
When Pixar Animation Studios released “Inside Out” in the summer of 2015, it was a financial and critical success and a poignant and relatable tale of adolescent woes. It also landed at the top spot of my top ten films of the year. The movie was a return to new and original ideas for a studio relying on the box-office draw of sequels. One thing was certain: here was an animated feature that didn’t need a sequel, but here we are with “Inside Out 2”. Disney can’t resist, but considering our protagonist would now be entering some turbulent emotions, there is plenty of material to choose from.
Screenwriter Meg LeFauve returns to Riley’s internal world and is this time joined by writer Dave Holstein (“Weeds” and “The Brink”) as her story veers into the precarious minefield of the teen years. The pair team up with director Kelsey Mann, a storyboard artist who makes his feature-length directorial debut here. Things are getting much more complicated for Riley and her inside feelings. The result is a beautifully rendered animated adventure that navigates specific changes with expected heart and humor.
As we reunite with Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) she has just turned 13-years-old and it’s the summer before she starts high school. She’s excited to be spending time with her friends, Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu), at a varsity hockey camp after they caught the attention of Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown). What happens in high school could all depend on how well she does amongst the older girls at camp, one of whom, Val (Lilimar Hernandez), is a hockey player she looks up to.
Internally, Riley’s personified Emotions have developed a pretty smooth system that anticipates and regulates situations the young girl encounters over the past two years. Led by Joy (Amy Poehler) and joined by Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), the crew has managed a newly formed element in Riley’s ever-changing mind, called “Sense of Self,” housed in her Belief System. Joy has made it her duty only to fill this area with positive memories and prides herself on developing a system that banishes all her negative memories to the back of Riley’s mind.
The night before Riley is set to take off to camp, a puberty alarm goes off in Headquarters, which finds the existing Emotions waking up to a completely redesigned console. New Emotions, such as Anxiety (an eerily on-point Maya Hawke), Envy (an underutilized Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser, primarily silent, unfortunately), have moved in and begun to take over as Riley’s starts to experience brand new situations. Joy and her crew are initially apprehensive of such abrupt change, but they welcome these new Emotions nevertheless. There’s also a new Emotion named Nostalgia (June Squib), who makes a couple of appearances fondly recalling Riley’s past experiences, which is funny considering her age. It made me chuckle and wonder if every young teen has an old lady’s voice inside their head.
When Riley and her two friends arrive at camp, driven by her parents (once again played by Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane), her idyllic summer plans change. She learns that Bree and Grace won’t be going to the same high school as her, which destroys the plans they are all making together. Anxiety picks up on this and sets out to fix Riley’s problems singlehandedly. But first, she’ll have to get rid of Joy and the other original Emotions, so she has them taken away by security (not sure what emotions or part of the brain they are) and thrown into a memory vault of secrets that resembles a jail.
While Joy and her crew have to figure out a way to break out and return to Headquarters, Anxiety aims to get a handle on Riley’s thoughts by hijacking her Belief System and her Sense of Self (that’s where her internal voices, like “I’m a good person,” that develop over time, are stored), to impress the older players and the coach. Riley’s social interactions with these new girls often call upon Embarrassment and Ennui to chime in, which is a new experience for her. When she backpedals her devotion to a boy band that everyone else thinks she should’ve outgrown, she suddenly feigns interest due to the fear of not fitting in. This new behavior ostracizes Bree and Grace, changing who Riley is from the inside out.
Joy has always been the leader inside Riley’s head, doing her best to keep everything spinning appropriately and running smoothly. However, introducing these new Emotions, especially Anxiety, throws Joy off, and she starts to wonder if Riley has outgrown the need for her. That’s undoubtedly relatable to viewers since, most likely, we were all more joyful in our youth. Life gets complicated when puberty hits, with new feelings, unpredictable temperament, and hormones going haywire. We’re unaware of it most of the time, but the people around us sure are.
The overall plot of “Inside Out 2” isn’t all that different from the last movie, but the new Emotions and Riley’s new stage in life lead to some funny and poignant moments. There’s some familiarity with the exiled Emotions set out to get “the thing” and bring it back to Headquarters to make everything right. Still, during that time, writers LeFauve and Holstein and director Mann introduced some new elements to Riley’s mind, creatively expanding the landscape. Joy and her pals paddle through the Stream of Consciousness, fly into a Brainstorm, and communicate across a Sar Chasm. Sure, such cleverness primarily targets adult viewers, but who cares?
There are also some hit-or-miss new characters that Joy and company meet in jail, including Bloofy (Ron Funches), a “Dora the Explorer” type of cartoon character, and there’s low-res video game hero Lance Slashblade (Yong Yea), who represents Riley’s crush and delivers weak moves as a last-gen creation. There’s also Pouchy (James Austin Johnson) an anthropomorphic fanny pack that’s a comical send-up of Toodles from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006-2016) television show, who is a helpful resource in a pinch. The fun element of these characters is that they are rendered using a different animation style than our main Emotions. Again, parents are more likely to get many of these new characters than young viewers, but they might click with those around Riley’s age.
While the story follows a particular formula, “Inside Out 2” also reminds us that we can’t rely solely on one or even five emotions. Joy learned how much Riley needs Sadness in the last movie, and here it takes a while for Joy to understand how Riley can benefit from Anxiety and her pals. Joy has to learn that removing Riley’s negative memories doesn’t protect or help the girl, just as Anxiety has to understand that completely taking control isn’t helpful either. How a new complex Belief System develops internally for Riley makes sense, causing her to realize who she wants to be.
Of course, there’s a plethora of material to mine in the teen years, but with “Inside Out 2” at the cusp of it all, it makes sense that this story doesn’t solve all of the girl’s problems. However, if Disney/Pixar are thinking of a sequel (of course they are), it’ll be very challenging to avoid getting into all the messiness at the heart of the teen years. It certainly would be an extreme challenge for the writers to keep the next chapter within the safe confines of a PG rating.
On that note, Pixar is in a strange place right now. Sure, this sequel has been an enormous box-office success after banking on familiarity with a specific audience. There’s been other great movies from the studio that weren’t sequels, but were not released theatrically (primarily due to the pandemic), so it’s uncertain if “Luca, “Soul”, and “Turning Red”, all award-winners, would’ve done theatrically instead of dropping exclusively on Disney+. (NOTE: all three were released earlier this year in an attempt to have fans experience them on the big screen). It remains to be seen if Pixar can continue to deliver new ideas and original concepts to theaters that aren’t sequels.
Regardless, Mann helms a wonderful follow-up to an animated feature that easily sits within Pixar’s top five. The visuals are once again outstanding, and the characters are rich in detail. The director applies just the right pacing for the story, with the activity around and inside Riley always on the move. “Inside Out 2” navigates new emotional and creative territory in a silly and fun manner while maintaining the complex nuances of the human condition from the last movie.
RATING: ***
