By Richard Ades
When we first met Riley in 2015’s Inside Out, she was a homesick 11-year-old whose family had just moved from Minnesota to San Francisco. True to its title, the Disney/Pixar pic mostly took place inside her head, where “Joy,” “Sadness” and other characters representing primary emotions struggled to help her deal with the seismic change.
It was an animated tour de force that brought psychological concepts such as personality, memory and sense of self to life with the help of endearing characters, imaginative landscapes and daredevil adventures.
Now we have Inside Out 2, which catches up with our hockey-playing heroine (voiced by Kensington Tallman) as a 13-year-old who seems to have settled into her new life. Once again, Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and their fellow emotions work tirelessly to keep Riley on an even keel.
All seems well until they come across a part of the growing girl’s psyche that they haven’t seen before: puberty. (Yes, the flick goes there.) Before they know it, they’re being evicted from the emotional “control room” and replaced by teen-appropriate newcomers such as Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) and their panic-prone leader, Anxiety (Maya Hawke).
Meanwhile, in the outside world, Riley is dealing with a series of disasters, starting with the realization that her changing body is suddenly in need of deodorant. What’s worse, she learns that her two best friends will be assigned to a different school next year.
The upshot is that what originally seemed like good news—the hockey coach at her future high school invites her to take part in a “skills camp”—becomes a source of endless stress. Stuck in a “disgusting” body and soon to be separated from her BFFs, she pins all her happiness on making a good impression on the ice.
It’s obvious she’s headed for a meltdown, but Joy and the rest of her exiled emotional support group can only watch helplessly while Anxiety and the other newcomers fuel the girl’s misgivings.
Directed by Kelsey Mann from a funny, heartfelt and clever script by Dave Holstein and Meg LeFauve, Inside Out 2 is brilliant at depicting the fears and doubts swirling around the mind of a typical teenage girl. If there’s any disappointment at all, it’s that the Riley’s relationship with her friends hits a variation of a snag that we’ve seen countless times before.
On the other hand, we’ve never seen it depicted with such glorious visuals. In true Pixar fashion, the animation is beautiful, if sometimes a bit overwhelming. The same can be said for the sound design, especially if you see the film, as I did, in an IMAX theater.
Aided by an invested cast, it all leads to an engrossing and rewarding story that should appeal to teens and pre-teens, as well as anyone who remembers what it was like to go through that difficult time of life when everything was changing.
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Inside Out 2 (rated PG) opens June 14 at theaters nationwide.
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