'Inside Out 2' Is a Heartfelt Emotional Journey with only a Minor Case of Sequelitis

By Melanie Fischer | Film | June 20, 2024 |

By Melanie Fischer | Film | June 20, 2024 |

When the first Inside Out released in 2015, Pixar was at the top of its game, and the endearing, quietly sophisticated exploration of adolescent emotions represented the highest of highs—critical acclaim, commercial success, and an Oscar for good measure. But the nine years since have been decidedly tumultuous ones for the animation studio. Inside Out was followed by The Good Dinosaur, Pixar’s first commercial failure. John Lasseter, the chief creative officer who oversaw the company from its earliest days, was ousted in a wave of damning sexual misconduct allegations and reports of fostering a toxic workplace environment. The studio’s once pristine box office record turned turbulent. (Parent company Disney’s puzzling decision to punt three of Pixar’s more recent releases—Soul, Luca, and Turning Red—straight to Disney+, even as movie theaters got fully back in business post-Covid, hardly seemed to help.)

All things considered, it certainly feels like a make-or-break-it moment for Pixar, and banking on a follow-up to what is arguably the studio’s crowning achievement in recent-ish memory certainly makes sense, strategically.

The resulting film, on the whole, succeeds where it counts most. Inside Out 2 is not a masterpiece, and putting it toe-to-toe against its predecessor would be an ill-matched fight. But it’s an entertaining movie that gets the basics right and pays sufficient homage to the spirit of the original, successfully expanding the scope of the story at the expense of not reaching the same depths.

Much like the first installment, Inside Out 2 paints an earnest and empathetic picture of adolescent anguish—only this time involving a lot more hormone fluctuations, as protagonist Riley (Kensington Tallman) is now thirteen and firmly in puberty’s mortifying clutches. The year that’s passed since the first film’s end has been more or less smooth sailing: Riley still loves hockey and has only gotten better at it, along with her best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu). The trio are so good, in fact, that they not only lead their team to a championship victory but catch the eye of high school coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown), who invites them to participate in a summer hockey bootcamp with the high school team.

Everything’s coming up roses in the life of Riley; her high school years couldn’t be teed up more perfectly if she tried. And then, on the way to hockey camp, devastation: Riley discovers that both Bree and Grace have been zoned to a different high school.

While Riley is left reeling over her friends’ upcoming departure, the emotions inhabiting Riley’s mind are stuck facing unwanted new arrivals. As it turns out, puberty means a drastic emotional remodel complete with new additions—much to the surprise and trepidation of the original crew consisting of Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira). The newcomers? Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and most disruptively of all, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), who immediately challenges Joy for the driver’s seat position.

As far as sequels go, Inside Out 2 does a commendable job of recapturing the essence of the original, especially on a more surface level. This in itself is an admirable accomplishment considering the massive shift in the creative team behind the two films. Writer Meg LeFauve returns from the first installment, but director Kelsey Mann (in his feature debut) is new, as is LeFauve’s co-writer Dave Holstein.

However, while still emotionally earnest and sufficiently entertaining, Inside Out 2 does suffer from several of those shortcomings most ubiquitous to sequels, albeit a mild case. The conclusion of the first film sees Riley coming to understand complex feelings, which exist as various permutations of the five core emotions that make up the original cast. Needing to expand the world in search of new conflicts and storylines to explore, more “complex” emotions in the sequel are now just entirely new characters—a development which, considering the first installment also peeked into the minds of grown-up characters like Riley’s parents, comes across as rather retconned. Not intolerably so, but noticeably.

The narrative need for the new emotional characters is clear, as the plot here involving Riley’s emotions is very similar to the original film: Joy tries to sweep bad stuff under the rug to make Riley happy, but her efforts to ignore problems ultimately backfire in such a way that results in her being expelled from the “control center” of Riley’s mind, etc. New characters are necessary to avoid being overly repetitive under such familiar circumstances.

But beyond the clearly retroactive nature of some of these additions to the mythology, the bigger issue is how the modifications start to make the whole premise of Inside Out feel like a somewhat overextended metaphor. The elegance and clarity of the psychological and philosophical commentary has grown muddled. The insights of the first film were the kind that resonate more profoundly upon deeper reflection. The commentary of the sequel, although still earnest, feels shallower; much of it starts to unravel under scrutiny. That aside, while Inside Out 2 might not be as smart as the original, it’s a solidly fun sequel that’s miles ahead of anything its recent competitors have to offer in terms of kid-friendly viewing. (Yes, I’m talking about IF.)

Another noticeable difference from the original is the extent to which Inside Out 2 appears to hint at plans for future installments. On the one hand, this is hardly surprising in the current movie landscape that’s fully overrun with prequels, sequels, and adaptations of major IP. But on the other hand, now that Riley has properly entered her teenage years, it’s difficult to picture how the franchise might continue to explore adolescent psychology in a way that feels genuine while also staying PG. The fraught landscape of the teenage mind has proven a fruitful playing ground for compelling film and television, but there’s a reason most of the relevant hits in recent memory, from Eighth Grade to Big Mouth and Pen15, have been R-rated. That said, if there is anyone who could figure out how to walk this fine line and pull it off, it probably would be the team at Pixar. Time will tell.

Inside Out 2 is now playing in theaters.