Inside Out 2 opens in theaters Friday, June 14.
Surprising and disappointing in equal measure, Inside Out 2 manages to strike a mostly careful balance with its overstuffed new ensemble, while still failing to live up to the rousing highs of its far-superior predecessor. I’m talking, of course, about Pixar’s Turning Red, a deftly symbolic film that captures the untidy emotions of puberty and adolescent girlhood in a way the studio’s Inside Out sequel refuses to. As far as the first Inside Out is concerned: Director Kelsey Mann builds on its concepts with imaginative spark, but finds itself unable to break past its own barriers of logic and metaphor, the way Pete Docter’s original so powerfully did.
Riley (Kensington Tallman, replacing Kaitlyn Dias) is now 13 years old, and far happier with her new life in the Bay Area. She has a pair of close friends, Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu), a hobby playing ice hockey, and a sunny disposition. Her emotions also work in tandem to guide her through most situations; they’re represented once again by the lively, fairy-esque Joy (Amy Poehler), the stout, hot-headed Anger (Lewis Black), the stringy, shaky Fear (Tony Hale filling in for Bill Hader), the broccoli-shaded Disgust (Liza Lapira, replacing Mindy Kaling), and the now more well-adjusted, teardrop-shaped Sadness (Phyllis Smith). Hale and Lapira tap into what makes these particular personifications fun to begin with in a way Hader and Kaling didn’t have the chance to; Fear and Disgust (not to mention Anger) happen to play more prominent roles this time around.
These characters also control different mechanisms than before. The screenplay, by Dave Holstein and returning writer Meg LeFauve, harkens back to the first film in numerous ways, but doesn’t repeat its specific details. With Riley’s “core memories” presumably set in stone (this key aspect of Inside Out isn’t mentioned, but rather left up to assumption), Joy now leads the charge in protecting Riley’s “sense of self,” a gorgeous flower-like structure that’s delicate like Riley herself and woven from glowing threads representing individual beliefs. Joy, however, still seems to falter by ejecting “bad memories” to the back of Riley’s mind, where they pile up in a far-away void – a skillful foreshadowing of things to come.
On the eve of Riley’s hockey camp getaway with her pals – a three-day event with implications for high school the following fall – puberty suddenly kicks in, represented by sudden construction work in the emotions’ command center, Headquarters, and a “Men at work”-type sign that denotes “Puberty is messy.” Beyond a single scene of Riley’s new physical insecurities, Inside Out 2 never quite lives up to this obvious truism. But it does introduce an immediate sense of chaos via the arrival of new emotions: the nervous, zippy Anxiety (Maya Hawke), the big, brash Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), the fluid, unflappable Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos, leaning into her French-ness), and Envy, whose defining characteristic is… she’s small? Despite cute and committed voice work from Ayo Edebiri, the fourth member of the quartet doesn’t have much of a distinct personality or function, beyond giving Anxiety someone to talk to, since Embarrassment and Ennui are mostly silent. Oh well, they can’t all be winners.
If there’s one thing Inside Out 2 nails, it’s the sudden onset of emotional change in early teen-hood, embodied by the sheer chaos of nine characters bickering over a mental control panel meant for four. How this unfolds is intriguing, and feels deeply personal: With Anxiety at the wheel, working overtime to prepare for every possible outcome (no matter how unreal or immaterial), Riley’s sense of self begins to change as she tries to impress the older players, until her friends no longer recognize her, and she no longer recognizes herself.
Unfortunately, the way this tale is represented internally is fundamentally uninteresting, even if it proves funny on occasion. The plot practically mirrors Inside Out, in which Joy and Sadness are ejected from Headquarters and have to find their way back. Only this time, they’re accompanied by Fear, Anger and Disgust. The major difference, however, is that the movie never really takes the time to focus on the physical and emotional effects of unforeseen new feelings rising to the fore, whether in Riley’s real world or the one inside her head.
While Inside Out 2 depicts the sudden, heart-racing stir of anxious thought – along with some meaty internal monologues about Riley’s crumbling self-worth – it packs little emotional punch. Where the first film embodied the notion of leaving childhood behind through the death of an imaginary friend, and eventually, depicted an act of reconciliation via a child’s first brush with the intricacies of powerful mixed feelings, the sequel never really attempts anything of the sort. Though it harps on the supposed greater complexity of the new emotions, its depictions of Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui and Envy are – in comparison to Joy and Sadness – deeply over-simplified, in a way that poses storytelling hurdles.
Hawke is a delightful addition as Anxiety, a nervous, deeply sympathetic antagonist whose goals stem from a love for Riley equaled only by Joy – who, in turn, has doubts about her usefulness. Meanwhile, the friendly dynamic between Sadness and Embarrassment, two emotions who recognize something of themselves in one another, is incredibly sweet. However, that’s about as deep as Inside Out 2 gets with the emotions’ shared journey. By separating them once again, and by keeping the ones that are actually in conflict far apart, we miss out on the kinds of symbolic confrontations that kept Inside Out afloat.
In their place, there’s a rush to reach its conclusion. Inside Out 2 has a few neat and inventive ideas that make for hearty amusement (including particularly hilarious recurring gags based on early-2000s video games and well-known Nickelodeon properties), but its editing rarely seems to connect Riley’s story with that of Joy, Anxiety, and so forth, whether through movement, match-cuts, or contrast. The cause-and-effect between Riley’s actions and the impulses that drive them is usually mentioned, but never fully felt through the image.
This is, in a nutshell, the problem with Inside Out 2. It’s a smart film, but rarely an emotional one. It has plenty to say about the way one’s teenage years give way to changes in personality and to paralyzing new feelings, but it rarely elicits joy, sadness, or any of their cohorts the way the previous film did. And while its catalyst is the onset of puberty, the movie rarely gets intimate or visceral enough to confront the actual reasons that “Puberty is messy” (as the aforementioned sign says). Not only does it ignore the physical changes tied to the emotional ones (another point in Turning Red’s favor), but it also rarely captures the interplay between emotions. It’s too neat in its unpacking of adolescence, and too concerned with explaining its metaphors – which are likely to go over younger viewers’ heads – rather than letting their effects be felt.