Pixar Animation Studios has always had an interesting relationship with sequels. Like their parent company, the Walt Disney Company, Pixar has often been pretty open about how sequels to their animated classics are what help fund new originals. This can sometimes feel like an excuse for the films’ supposed lack of quality when compared to their predecessors, and to be fair, the odds are stacked pretty high against these sequels right off the bat.
Pixar’s self-imposed curse is their commitment to high-quality creativity and originality amongst their features, which is what has made movies like Toy Story, Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Ratatouille, Up, and others such cultural juggernauts. However, this is also what makes it so difficult for Pixar sequels/prequels to live up to expectations — they’re forced to try and follow up literal legends not just among their own studio, but the animation and film industry at large.
That’s probably a bit too much pressure, and while it’s sadly often true that Pixar sequels don’t manage to capture the same kind of magic as their originals, it’s not like they’re without merit. There are plenty of moving, funny, and effective moments to be found throughout the entire Toy Story franchise, Monsters University, Finding Dory, and The Incredibles 2, even if some might not be quite as memorable on the whole. This brings us to Inside Out 2, a continuation of Pete Docter’s 2015 hit that explored the mind and emotions of a young girl named Riley. Docter, who now operates as the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar, has contributed much to what has earned the studio its mighty reputation, having directed Monsters Inc., Up, Soul, and also worked on many others behind the scenes.
Along with Coco in 2017, Inside Out was a critical success during a time marked by sequels — of the 11 Pixar films released during the 2010s, only four were originals. Inside Out 2 arrives at yet another pivotal moment where the studio, according to Bloomberg, will supposedly be stripping more of their precious IP clean, and unfortunately acts as an indicator of the sort of middling, good-but-not-great content audiences can maybe expect to see in the coming years. There’s a lot to enjoy with this sequel, but when forced to compare it to the creativity, storytelling, and emotion of the original, it simply can’t match it.
Directed by Kelsey Mann in his feature debut and written by Mann, Meg LeFauve, and Dave Holstein (Pete Docter only returns as an executive producer), Inside Out 2 continues the story of the emotions that live inside Riley’s head. Now a 13-year-old girl about to enter high school, Riley (Kensington Tallman) is going through major changes once again, which causes some serious havoc in her mind’s headquarters for Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira). To make things even more chaotic, Riley’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Andersen (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane), are sending her to a summer hockey camp where she’ll be forced to make an impression on her school’s most popular hockey player, Valentina “Val” Ortiz (Lilimar), while balancing her relationship with best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu).
Brand new emotions are moving into Riley’s mind, and with them at the control of a brand new, orange-colored console replacing the old purple one, Joy and the others are given the boot. The new gang is led by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), an orange and hyperactive bundle of nerves that obsesses over every possible bad scenario Riley might encounter. Hey, wasn’t that basically Fear’s job? Admittedly, the first movie isn’t super concise about how exactly Riley’s inner world works, but this sequel inevitably muddies the specifics over who does what and for what purpose even further.
Consider the rest of Anxiety’s team, which is made up of Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). It’s unclear what function they’re all actually serving. Envy just appears to be a partner of sorts to Anxiety, going along with whatever they’re deciding, and Ennui only takes over a few times when Riley is pretending to be cool and nonchalant rather than her genuinely being bored. A joke about teenage boredom and apathy seems easy, so it’s kind of odd that despite Ennui being a character, we don’t actually see it in action.
As for Embarrassment, their only job seems to be making Riley blush. This new emotion never drives any particular action in the script. It’s part of what makes the new batch of emotions all feel like tertiary characters for the most part. Thankfully, though, Anxiety has enough personality and narrative importance to make up for it. Singer-actress Maya Hawke (Stranger Things, Asteroid City) delivers her best performance by a mile in Inside Out 2. Anxiety steers the plot with zany energy and a toothy grin, cranking all of Riley’s doubts and insecurities up to eleven and changing her from within as Joy and the others get pushed aside.
It’s easy to enjoy the slapstick cartoon mayhem that all of the emotions of Riley’s inner workings find themselves in, as well as their Muppet-like designs and distinct characteristics. This Pixar sequel has no shortage of solid jokes, flies by at a rapid but not rushed pace, and does have at least some of the imaginative spark of the first film. The introduction of Riley’s personal belief system, her stream of consciousness, “sarchasms,” and other creative gags only strengthen the movie’s impressive world-building.
However, the central conflict between Joy and Anxiety over Riley’s “Sense of Self” is the strongest aspect of Inside Out 2 — a struggle over whether Riley can stay true to herself as a kind and good person or if the onset of puberty and newfound social pressures will irreparably change her. The Sense of Self is a beautiful new concept for the Inside Out world, one that feels like a natural progression from what Pete Docter and his team created with the original film and is the most in tune with its ethos. The visual design of how it comes to be is stunning as well.
The main problem with Inside Out 2 is that it never goes as far as it should with the opportunity it’s been given with this screenplay. Diving into the mind of a teenager is thorny business, and while it can be appreciated how this Pixar movie puts its focus on the emotional and mental changes Riley goes through more than the physical, it still comes across as somewhat tiptoeing around the messier sides of this formative moment of children’s lives. Inside Out 2 lacks the punch and the honesty of other films that deal with this age, like Eighth Grade, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, the upcoming Dìdi, and others.
Unlike other franchises, animated or not, Inside Out 2 doesn’t feel like it’s grown enough with its original audience of a decade ago. This isn’t to say that there needs to be explicit or suggestive content of some kind to make a coming-of-age story feel more real, but Riley’s struggles are all too safe at the end of the day — as if the filmmakers weren’t willing to fully engage with the complexities of early teenage problems. The story this time around simply isn’t as compelling as before, and it mutes the power that its emotional beats might have had. Inside Out 2 is also missing the obvious parental perspective of the original movie, which was a major part of what made that work so well.
Inside Out 2 is certainly effective and entertaining in its own right, though it just shows how far Pixar still has to go if they really want to complete the challenge of surpassing rather than just rehashing themselves in the years to come.
Inside Out 2 hits theaters on June 14!
Release Date: June 14, 2024.
Directed by Kelsey Mann.
Screenplay by Meg LeFauve & Dave Holstein.
Story by Kelsey Mann & Meg LeFauve.
Produced by Mark Nielsen.
Main Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, Kensington Tallman, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Lilimar, Paula Pell, Pete Docter, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Grace Lu, Yvette Nicole Brown, John Ratzenberger, June Squibb, Ron Funches, & Yong Yea.
Cinematographers: Adam Habib & Jonathan Pytko.
Composer: Andrea Datzman.
Production Company: Pixar Animation Studios.
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Runtime: 96 minutes
Rated PG.
