‘Inside Out 2’ movie review: Pixar’s worthy sequel brings forth another happy head trip 

A still from ‘Inside Out 2’

Riley (Kensington Tallman) is a well-adjusted girl thanks to her emotions, Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) keeping her on an even keel. They work tirelessly at Head Quarters (he he) banishing bad memories to the back of her mind, and planting good ones to strengthen her Sense of Self.

Riley is happy hanging out with her besties, Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), and Grace (Grace Lu), playing ice hockey and going for boy band concerts. After a particularly good game, Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) invites the three girls to go for a hockey camp, which they know might be the first step into the high school hockey side, the Fire Hawks, to play alongside the insanely popular Val Ortiz (Lilimar).

Then Riley turns 13 and as the puberty alarm goes off, in walk a bunch of new emotions. First the maintenance crew comes in to make space for the “other guys”. The new emotions led by the orange Anxiety (Maya Hawke) include Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) — don’t we all remember them from our callow youth? Oh and there is also the beige, fuzzy old lady Nostalgia (June Squibb).

Riley’s mum (Diane Lane) and dad (Kyle MacLachlan) get a blast of the new Riley, full of dramatic meltdowns and outbursts, before she sets out for hockey camp. Her anxiety is compounded when she hears that Bree and Grace are going to a different school. Joy and Anxiety clash over Riley’s behaviour at the camp. Anxiety wants Riley to concentrate on using every trick in the book and imagining all the worst case scenarios, to get selected, while Joy wants Riley to enjoy herself.

A still from ‘Inside Out 2’

Matters come to a head when the old emotions are banished to the back of Riley’s mind and the new lot take over. Joy and the old emotions have to return and wrest control from the Anxiety and her cohorts. When Inside Out came out in 2015, it was a revelation. Director Pete Docter was inspired by the changes his daughter went through as she was growing up to make the Academy-Award winning film. 

Inside Out 2 is a worthy sequel in terms of psychological insight, emotional weight, imagination, adventure and sheer spectacle. It is difficult to pick a single sequence from a wealth of gorgeously realised set pieces. There is the escape from the vault with the help of Deep Dark Secret (Steve Purcell), Bloofy (Ron Funches) a character from a children’s television show and his assistant Pouchy (James Austin Johnson), and the video game hero Lance Slashblade (Yong Yea) Riley had a crush on when she was younger.

There is the brainstorm with a pelting hail of ideas, crossing Sar-Chasm on a broccoli or the journey from the back of the mind on an avalanche of bad memories. Exceptional as the voice work and the eye-popping animation is, it is the breadth of imagination that blows the mind away; the inner workings of a growing mind are captured in a fantastic fun way.

It is no surprise that Inside Out was hailed by psychologists and philosophers alike, and the sequel is a worthy, wonderful expansion of that world. It is comforting, in a way, to think that there are emotions in our Head Quarters working hard to bring out the best versions of ourselves, whenever we feel overwhelmed or on the brink of a meltdown. 

Inside out 2 is currently running in theatres