Inside Out 2 Review: One Of Pixar's Best Sequels

Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic

Released in 2015, Inside Out immediately became one of the best animated films that Pixar had ever made. It is hard to believe that it has been nearly a decade since that film, but nine years later, Pixar has returned to the world of Riley’s mind with a sequel in Inside Out 2.

Inside Out ends with Riley (Kensington Tallman) on the cusp of adolescence and puberty, and Inside Out 2 takes the viewer on the rollercoaster ride that is the emotional life of a 13-year-old girl. The five emotions from the previous film, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Fear (Tony Hale) are joined by a few new emotions when the puberty alarm goes off overnight in headquarters. Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edibiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) arrive during the late-night demolition and expansion of the control board. 

Riley’s onset of puberty is compounded by attending hockey camp looking to impress the high school coach, Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown), and Riley’s hockey idol, high schooler Val Ortiz (Lilimar). She must also wrestle with the news that her two best friends will attend a different school next year. All of this leads to Anxiety and the rest of the new emotions wresting control of Headquarters and jettisoning the original emotions to the back of Riley’s mind.

The structure of the world inside Riley’s mind was one of the impressive aspects of the original film, with a big focus on the islands of her personality. With the sequel, a few new elements beyond the new emotions have been added; the most important to the plot is Riley’s “Sense of Self,” a glowing plant-like orb that grows from the core memories brought to her Belief System, which is like an underground lake that special core memories are brought to. Joy launches what she thinks are the bad memories into the back of Riley’s mind. When Anxiety takes over, she begins building a new Sense of Self for Riley, one fed by different core memories.

First-time director Kelsey Mann, along with co-writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein, does a good job of expanding the interior world of Riley’s mind that audiences encountered in the first film. They also do an excellent job of capturing the exterior world that Riley is engaging with and processing everything coming at her. 

Riley wants to impress the coach, Val and Val’s friends. She doesn’t know how to react to the news about her friends and the upcoming school year. In the first movie, she struggles to adjust to a new situation when her family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. Just as she’s finally adjusted, she’s facing upheaval again.

The film does an excellent job of capturing the social awkwardness of being a teenager, too: not just the social interactions but the insecurity that comes with figuring out how to try and impress new people rather than just being yourself. This is where Riley’s blossoming Sense of Self comes into play.

The glimpses into the Headquarters of people other than Riley are also quite hilarious, not just with her parents and their reactions to her hitting puberty, but also a glimpse inside the mind of one of her friends breaking down the change in Riley’s facial expression when reacting to them. 

Like the original film, the movie is gorgeously rendered CGI, with all the emotions having their unique features and quirks (There may be no better character feature than Envy’s eyes). New areas of Riley’s mind are explored, too. We are treated to the Memory Vault, the Stream of Consciousness, and the Sar-chasm as the old emotions journey to the back of Riley’s mind to retrieve her old sense of self. There’s also a pitstop in Imagination Land that I’m pretty sure culminates in a reference to the Apple Macintosh 1984 commercial.

If there are any complaints about Inside Out 2, it would be that it suffers a bit from sequelitis in that the plot points, though different, feel very much beat for beat like those of Inside Out. Also, the film seems a little undecided on properly deploying Anxiety. While Anxiety is ultimately just trying to do her best, at times, the character comes across as a little too villainous. It is worth noting that Maya Hawke’s vocal performance is outstanding. She imbues the character with the quality of flying by the seat of your pants.

There are a lot of laughs, with the same aim at a conclusion that emotionally resonates. I ultimately appreciated where the film ends up, even if it doesn’t quite have the same emotional heft as the first film, because it feels more familiar this time around. While many of the beats are familiar, Inside Out 2 builds nicely off the previous film.

As far as Pixar sequels go, this is one of the good ones.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars