Director: Kelsey Mann
Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, Kensington Tallman, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan
Genre: Animation/Comedy
Run Time: 97 min
Opens: 12 June 2024
Rating: PG
In 2015, Inside Out introduced audiences to 11-year-old Riley Andersen and the emotions inside her head. Praised as one of Pixar’s best movies, Inside Out left the door open for a sequel, and nine years later, it’s back to Headquarters.
It is two years after the events of the first movie. Riley (Kensington Tallman) is selected to join a hockey camp at the high school she is about to join. She struggles to maintain her close friendship with Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) while trying to fit in with the members of the Firehawks, the high school hockey team.
Inside Headquarters, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) work in harmony. Headquarters undergoes an unexpected renovation as Riley turns 13, with the arrival of new emotions including Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). The new arrivals upend the five main emotions’ operation as chaos ensues. Joy and company must wrest control of Headquarters back from Anxiety and her crew as Riley undergoes a tumultuous time at the hockey camp.
Inside Out 2 builds on the strong framework that Inside Out established, remaining relatable and insightful while playing with new ideas. New emotions crashing the party is a logical place for the story to go, and Anxiety is a compelling new antagonist. One of the themes in Inside Out is that emotions generally perceived as negative, including sadness, fear and anger, all have their place, and it’s about modulating emotions more than eradicating them. Anxiety challenges that notion as a frantic, disruptive presence, but like the other emotions, she too is acting in Riley’s best interest.
One way to look at Inside Out 2 is as a riff on Die Hard, with Anxiety as Hans Gruber. Sadness even crawls through a pipe ala John McClane in the air duct. Anxiety is an antagonist who is incredibly easy to dislike, but she’s not strictly a villain. One of the movie’s best sequences involves Anxiety making Riley’s imagination, characterised as animators in a bullpen, generate worst-case scenarios. This is an evocative representation of how anxiety functions. This sequence also seems inspired by the “1984” commercial for Apple’s Macintosh computer.
Many sequels expand the story’s scope, sometimes to their detriment. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of that in Inside Out 2. There are many more moving parts than in the first movie and the story is harder to track. Director Kelsey Mann originally pitched nine new emotions, cutting them down to four, but even then, it feels like there may be too many characters. A lot of storytelling is about throwing obstacles at the protagonist to see how they overcome them, but Inside Out 2 might have a few too many obstacles. The first movie gave us a creative visualisation of the mind’s architecture, and while the sequel builds on that and shows us a few new areas, none of the ideas are quite as inventive or immediately sticky as in the first movie. Inside Out 2 is often effectively emotional, but it is rarely as elegant as its predecessor.
The original voice actors return, apart from Mindy Kaling as Disgust and Bill Hader as Fear, reportedly over pay disputes. Amy Poehler’s lead performance as Joy remains energetic and expressive without feeling exaggerated. One of the best parts of the first movie was the interplay between Poehler’s Joy and Phyllis Smith’s Sadness. There’s less of that here, but when it happens, it works.
Maya Hawke’s Anxiety is suitably earnest and jittery, annoying yet inexplicably endearing. Her vocal performance suits the character’s somewhat Muppet-like design.
Ayo Edebiri’s Envy is cute but not especially well-defined, while Paul Walter Hauser’s Embarrassment doesn’t say much – he’s too shy to. Adèle Exarchopoulos’ Ennui is pretty much one joke (she’s bored in a European way) but it’s funny.
Summary: Inside Out 2 is frequently funny and insightful, building on the original movie to create a layered adventure. Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, is an excellent antagonist, a disruptive force who is annoying yet oddly endearing. Unfortunately, Inside Out 2 is sometimes too busy, with too many characters and too much going on, compared to the first movie’s more elegant storytelling. Many of the new ideas work, but none surpass the creativity and inventiveness of the original. Still, it is a moving, enjoyable feels trip.
RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
Jedd Jong
The movie and me 