Rating: PG | Runtime: 96 minutes
Release Date: June 14th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Pixar Animation Studios / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Director(s): Kelsey Mann
Writer(s): Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein / Kelsey Mann and Meg LeFauve (story)

We are suppressed emotions!

The emotions inside Riley Andersen (Kensington Tallman) can’t ignore that puberty alert any longer as year thirteen brings with it a full-blown control room overhaul. And, despite them not thinking it, one is desperately needed. Not because Joy (Amy Poehler) and the gang (Phyllis Smith and Lewis Black return as Sadness and Anger with Tony Hale and Liza Lapira taking over for Fear and Disgust) were doing a poor job. They’d actually stewarded Riley into becoming a kind, generous, and morally sound teen. The problem is that their stewardship might have been a bit too hands-on. Because while Joy learned to accept help from her co-workers, she hasn’t yet realized she’s just a helper too.

It’s a smart avenue for a return to the franchise for director Kelsey Mann and screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein. Where Inside Out was about coping with external change, Inside Out 2 looks to give form to our need to cope with internal change too. This is partially achieved through the introduction of newer, more nuanced emotions such as Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). But also through the self-awareness that all of these emotions have reached a point where the identity of their host has surpassed them. They’ve served their roles as Riley’s interpreters in youth. Now they must learn to take a backseat role as caretakers, not controllers.

Whereas Joy had the capacity to learn and grow when forced to combat her own worst urges by trusting the others, Anxiety is too tightly wound to take that extra breath and look beyond the here and now. We see it in the way she doubles down whenever acknowledging her decision was incorrect. There arrives a brief moment of remorse, but it cannot last longer than the second necessary to process the next knee-jerk response to make up for it. Her process isn’t to learn, but to compensate. It’s about asking what can Riley do to negate the error rather than what she can do to ensure the error is never repeated. Anxiety’s choices compound Riley’s stress. She means well, but can’t get out of her own way.

The unfortunate trouble in the film—as in life—is that the initial idea manifested from anxiety seems sound. Of course we should shield ourselves from the uncontrollable pain of tomorrow by controlling it today. But what if we interrupt that as: Why let our friends hurt us later when we can hurt them now? Is that something we can live with? Is it something we can fight as it festers inside and puts us on a path towards greater destruction? That’s how things spiral out of control. Sure, Joy’s naïveté has the potential to force Riley into making a mistake now that she’s entering a more complicated world of adolescence, but we must make them in order to understand them. Avoidance only prolongs the inevitable while also letting its fallout grow.

Much like Joy and Sadness’s adventure proves the only way forward is together, the same is true here. It’s simply easier said than done when two alphas like Joy and Anxiety are locking horns. Sadness was afraid she’d ruin everything and thus let Joy push her aside until it was too late. Anxiety is conversely very confident that her way is correct. Perhaps even more confident than Joy is about her own. So, instead of being side-by-side to learn the truth together, Anxiety ships the original quintet of emotions off to the back of the mind. She exiles them to take control of and rebuild Riley’s “system of beliefs” while Joy is left to search for the original system with neither considering the other might have a point. They’re so wrapped up in what they want, they strip away Riley’s autonomy.

It’s a fascinating shift of focus as a result. Where Riley needed her emotions to lead in Inside Out, her salvation in Inside Out 2 lies in stopping them from driving the car into a wall. We therefore see a lot more of Riley’s actions in the real world this time around as processing emotions makes way for controlling them. There are some real heartbreaking moments via Anxiety’s inability to stop spiraling despite knowing she should, but they can’t compare to the gut-punch that was Riley’s loss of innocence via Bing-Bong. Will this differ depending on the viewer? Sure. I can relate to the struggles of the first film more than the second. But I know many people who will probably relate to the second more than the first. It was harder for me to find agency in the world than in myself.

That’s not to say this chapter doesn’t have some memorable peripheral characters and moments of its own. They simply don’t quite impact the central story beyond laughter. Bloofy (Ron Funches) and Pouchy (James Austin Johnson) are extremely successful comic relief and Anger, Ennui, Sadness, and Embarrassment all deliver on their names to wonderful effect, but they’re all just prolonging things so Anxiety can go too far and Joy can realize she already had. It’s more of a two-dimensional structure than its predecessor even if the emotions themselves remain three-dimensional. It’s not enough to derail its success, but it did leave me wishing for more. Sadly, that’s a tough reality to avoid when you’re following up a masterpiece.

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Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as new Emotions show up unexpectedly. Among them is Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, who isn’t the type to take a back seat, which makes Riley’s core Emotions—like Fear (voice of Tony Hale), Anger (voice of Lewis Black), Joy (voice of Amy Poehler) and Disgust (voice of Liza Lapira)—a little uncomfortable. Directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.