Director: Kelsey Mann
Starring: (voices of) Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Diane Lane, Kyle McLachlan
Certificate: U
Run Time: 96 mins

Inside Out 2 is the sequel to the 2015 coming-of-age knockout from now-Pixar head creative Pete Docter. Inside Out is one of the least likely films from the Pixar canon to warrant a sequel and so not just in my view but this sequel has faced an uphill struggle from the start. Docter vacates the director’s chair this time for Kelsey Mann, who’s been with Pixar since 2013’s Monsters University. 

The sequel is set a year after the original, with Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tillman) having just turned 13 and entering high school. She continues to have a love for ice hockey and after impressing Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown), she’s selected to attend a summer camp to apply for a team at her designated high school. 

Riley’s emotions, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale replacing Bill Hader) and Disgust (Liza Lapira replacing Mindy Kaling) have sound control of her. However, on the night before she leaves, the ‘Puberty alarm’ sounds and the emotions’ console is replaced with one that makes Riley overreact. And things become even more stressful when four new emotions enter headquarters, led by Anxiety (Maya Hawke). 

Inside Out 2 unfortunately lacks the freshness and simplicity of the profound original but it’s not a completely wasted affair. Starting with the positives, the first and last twenty minutes are excellent. The beginning is sharply written and very much feels like a continuation of the original and the way in which the film ends is reasonably profound. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the film is rather messy. Perhaps this is by design given the original’s exploration of childhood was simplistic and adolescence is far from a coherent process. And on that front, the film delivers but there’s just too much going on. We’ve now gone from five emotions to nine and it’s always hard to juggle the right amount of screentime and have a meaningful amount of development when you have an overabundance of characters. Of the four new emotions, it’s only Hawke’s Anxiety that makes an impression. 

The original quintet of emotions are literally bottled away and removed from Headquarters and the quest element of them trying to return is in many ways, a retread of the original. There is an uninteresting element that the film is just going through the motions. 

But what annoyed me most was that Mann just doesn’t seem to understands the original’s concept. I know it’s a minor point, but why are none of the quintet of emotions on dream duty like one of them always is in the original whenever Riley is asleep? The literal train of thought is gone and has instead been replaced by a stream of consciousness, but why didn’t that exist in a child? Why are we being introduced to new childhood figures that didn’t exist in the original, given we’ve only moved a year forward now? And moving to major examples – why do none of the other teenagers we meet in the film have these new emotions? I wasn’t trying to interntionally pick holes but these are glaring omissions and it really threw me out the film. 

While Andrea Datzman honours Michael Giacchino’s original score and introduces a couple of rousing themes, it lacks the intelligence of Giacchino’s work. Listen carefully and you’ll notice Giacchino includes cues in the film’s earlier scenes which are later fully developed into the crescendo of when Riley runs away – the masterpiece on the soundtrack that is We Can Still Stop Her. Datzman’s score is simply window-dressing. 

Inside Out 2 is fine and I wouldn’t go as far to say that it shouldn’t exist. But it does somewhat undermine the original with some of its logic and Mann lacks the subtlety and delicate touch of Pete Docter. It’s also unfortunate Pixar have already explored puberty far more assuredly just two years ago with Turning Red, reducing the novelty and impact of Inside Out 2. There’s undoubtedly more to take away from repeat viewings of Inside Out 2 given it runs at a barraging pace but even still, it’s undoubtedly a mess. 

⭐⭐⭐ (Good)