Inside Out is the exception. Most sequels or franchise IP is stale retreads, diminishing the original by their existence. Inside Out just stopped, almost awaiting Riley’s next chapter in its incredible opening tale. But puberty is upon us, and Pixar’s growing up too, giving us a new creative team, new emotions, and new voices anchored by the same sterling storytelling capabilities the studio has cultivated since it’s beginnings.
Riley (Kensington Tallman) is in a good shape as a new teenager. Joy (Amy Poehler) has righted the ship, finding a happy union with Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Fear (Tony Hale) to help build Riley’s sense of self. But hockey camp looms on the horizon….as well as puberty. And with puberty comes new emotions: Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), and Joy’s new rival, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), who has some thoughts about Riley’s future that maybe Joy isn’t prepared to handle yet.
New director Kelsey Mann and writer Meg LeFauve used a child therapist to help storyboard Inside Out 2. Pixar clearly cares about getting this thing right, and put in the work to give people the most digestible teenager for parents and teenagers to understand themselves better. Unlike the core 5, the 4 new emotions (Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui) are relational emotions: you feel these things as you get older, after growing the ability to view yourself in someone else’s eyes, hence why we didn’t see them before. Also, through especially puberty, emotions heighten and control the person more than the person controls them, hence the Joy vs. Anxiety battle for dominance inside Riley, and if Riley herself has agency in those choices, maybe the movie’s best explanation/exploration. We also get incredible visual cues about how the imagination, and panic attacks, work. But this isn’t just a college course: there’s lots of fun spins on the incredible original world building from the first film: what does the part of the brain that holds secrets look like? and more importantly, what secrets does a 13 year old have? I belly laughed repeatedly during those sections. Everything Ennui does at least gets a chuckle. Also, props to the creative team’s ability to turn the figurative VERY literal. Apparently phrases about the mind translate very well to natural habitats. A movie that can make you laugh and teach you some complex emotional lesson that kids and adults could benefit from? Sounds like a Pixar Classic.
Props to Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, and especially Amy Poehler. These 3 are the holdovers from the first film, and create a safe center of the movie surrounded by the winds of change. Not that the newcomers are bad: in fact, they’re integral to Inside Out 2’s success. Tony Hale and Liza Lapira step into Fear and Disgust’s roles so well most people won’t notice a big change. Maya Hawke nails anxiety, which has to work for the movie’s premise to fly: like Joy (and frankly, all the other emotions), Anxiety has shades that make her complex and worthy of rivaling Joy for control over Riley. Ayo Edebiri and Paul Walter Hauser have fun in little parts. But I hope Adele Exarchopoulos becomes a household name after this one: her Ennui is perfect, and used in just the right quantity.
I suppose this gets harder as time goes on. I mean, is Stormy Daniels gonna do the voice of Horny for 15 year old Riley? But, so far, Pixar’s 2 for 2 on this premise, and after Turning Red, I trust they could find a way to work in more, um, adult wants and needs into a kids story without it getting too gross. I don’t know what this says about me, but I’d rather pay the $15-$20 to learn some warped psychology in a movie instead of going to actual therapy. Um, ignore that last part please?