‘Inside Out 2’ Review: Pixar’s Psych Studies Pay Off Big Time in Delightful Sequel Set in Turbulent Early Adolescence

‘Inside Out 2’

Disney/Pixar

Pixar’s 2015 instant classic, Inside Out, was the best possible psychological starter kit for curious kids. The movie was groundbreaking in its inventive way of showing children the complex workings of their minds, framed as a hair-raising adventure, while also making the tour into the subconscious both hilarious and deeply affecting for adults. What are the odds that a sequel almost a decade later and by a mostly new creative team could recapture its canonical predecessor’s magic and humanity? But graduating from childhood into the emotional minefield of early adolescence might even have improved upon it. 

Veteran Pixar storyboard artist Kelsey Mann hits a home run with his first feature, working from a screenplay by Meg LeFauve (the key holdover from Inside Out) and Dave Holstein that ingeniously personifies the tornado of conflicting feelings wreaking havoc inside the head of 13-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman).

Whereas many sequels bulk up on principal characters simply because the laws of the follow-up demand it, the script here follows the sound logic that the relatively simple core emotions of childhood would suddenly be jostling for space with a whole new set of volatile feelings and confused impulses when adolescence hits. It’s the balance of basic psychology with abstract concepts and inspired observational comedy that makes this a uniquely captivating coming-of-age tale.

Riley has come through her tween years as a kind, well-adjusted kid who loves her supportive parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan, back again) and her best friends Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green). She works hard in school and plays hard on the ice hockey rink. Her obsession with that sport, dating back to her early childhood in Minnesota, prompts some exciting opening action as Riley ricochets from desolation to triumph in the closing stretch of a game.

Inside “Head”-quarters, Joy (Amy Poehler) mans the emotion console with unflagging enthusiasm and occasional input from her cohorts Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), whose essential co-existence with happiness was the moving takeaway of the first film. This is a team that knows its job, retiring to bed each night with the satisfaction of having nurtured Riley’s healthy Sense of Self and shaped her Belief System.

But their peaceful slumber is broken by the piercing sound of the console’s “Puberty Alarm” going off in the middle of the night. Suddenly, a maintenance crew descends for demolition day, gutting HQ and upgrading the console for a more sophisticated model, built to manage the hormonal rollercoaster of adolescence. At the same time, Riley wakes up with a zit and a temper, while Joy & Co. find that even the gentlest touch of a button on the new console yields a wild overreaction.

As Riley sets off for an all-important hockey camp that will determine whether she makes the hotshot high school team, the Fire Hawks, a newly evolved emotion takes control. And what more fitting emotion for a young teenager in 2024 than Anxiety, a jittery figure that looks like a Looney Tunes character put through a laundry wringer, all teeth and bug eyes, crowned by a tuft of messy orange plumage and voiced by Maya Hawke with nervous energy to burn.

Also new to HQ are pint-sized Envy (Ayo Edebiri), primed to kick in with every social comparison; mortifyingly outsize Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), forever trying to disappear inside his hoodie; and most divinely, Ennui, a droopy manifestation of teenage apathy who seldom stirs from the couch where she operates the console remotely. Naturally, she’s French, voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos with sublime languor, nailing the humor in eye roll-accompanying comments like, “You care too much about things.”

Once Anxiety has put herself in charge, Riley starts sacrificing intrinsic values like loyalty to make way for competitiveness, turning her back on Grace and Bree in a determined bid to get in with the cool clique of Fire Hawks players, led by rink star Valentina (Lilimar). In a refreshing departure from the usual teen-movie mean-girl depiction, these young women are a welcoming multi-cultural crew that actively encourage Riley, even if Anxiety ensures that she’s ruled by her worst instincts.

The real conflict emerges when Anxiety exiles Joy and her childhood cohorts to The Vault, a subterranean storage unit for suppressed emotions where they make amusing new allies. It falls to Sadness, a perpetual Debbie Downer burdened by gloom and insecurity, to make it back to HQ and stop Anxiety before Riley’s Sense of Self is destroyed.

Just as the first film was peppered with funny set-pieces visualizing complex thought processes in hairy situations, Inside Out 2 mines humor and suspense from such elements as the stream of consciousness; a brainstorm; sarcasm (literally a “sar-chasm” that threatens to swallow Joy and friends); Imaginationland office staffers busily ordering up Anxiety’s worst-case scenarios; and the Parade of Future Careers, which allows the outcasts to hitch a ride on a Supreme Court Justice float.

Among my favorite jokes was the repeat appearance of Nostalgia (June Squibb), a sweet old dear carrying a cup of tea who’s sternly hurried out the door with cries of, “Too early!” Even if some of this once again will fly over the heads of the youngest audience members, the thrill ride of Joy & Co. facing endless setbacks while trying to stop out-of-control Anxiety is amply compelling even without the psychological framework.

The story beats, action sequences and sentimental moments — Joy’s despair when she’s out of ideas is quite touching — are expertly fine-tuned, and the dazzling visuals no less so. The colors seem even more vibrant than before and the characters more expressive, both in the external world and in the labyrinthine inner workings of Riley’s mind. The spirited score by Andrea Datzman makes everything pop even more. As unlikely an inspiration as it might seem, it makes sense that Mann has acknowledged a debt to the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems in the breathless pacing and escalating tension.

Returning cast Poehler, Black and the wonderful Smith do stellar voice work, conforming to their characters’ guiding principles but also bending to accommodate other emotions. Hale and Lapira ably step in for Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling as Fear and Disgust, respectively. Disgust’s eyelash-fluttering flirtation with hunky videogame hero Lance Slashblade (Yong Yea) is delicious.

Hawke is an excellent addition, making a worthy antagonist who takes over with the diplomacy of a Bolshevik but ultimately proves no less susceptible to pressure than the rest of them. I could have taken more of the always superb Edebiri, but Hauser’s Embarrassment, though he’s given few words, is adorable, a hulking great Snuffleupagus-adjacent creature whose pink hue gets even pinker when he blushes. And Exarchopoulos’ positively Huppertienne Ennui might be the funniest Pixar embodiment of haughty disdain since Edna Mode.

The message of Inside Out 2 is as universal and good-hearted as that of its predecessor: You might not know from one minute to the next what emotion is driving a teenage mind, but every messy part of the mechanism has both function and beauty. Be sure to sit tight at the end for a cute post-credits gag that nails the propensity of the young to blow things out of proportion.