Inside Out 2 (2024) – Deep Thoughts

Released: 13th June
Seen: 30th June

In 2015 Pixar released Inside Out, a fascinating film that explained the complex concept of emotions in a funny, heartwarming way and was incredibly accessible for people to understand. In my humble opinion, it’s also the best thing that Pixar has put out that didn’t include Woody or Buzz Lightyear. It was truly a miracle of a film that has some of the most beautiful imagery and emotional beats (Seriously, you want to make me cry like a baby in under 10 seconds? Just start singing “Who’s your friend who likes to play?” and I’ll lose my damn mind). It was about as close to perfect as you could get from the Pixar people and it made so much money that it was inevitable a sequel would happen. It took almost a full decade for them to make it happen but now we finally have our follow-up to the emotional rollercoaster that was Inside Out and fortunately, Inside Out 2 manages to live up to the expectations that were set for it.

Inside Out 2 brings us back to the head of Riley (Kensington Tallman) who has just turned 13. Her standard emotions, Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) seem to have things pretty much under control when suddenly a demolition team comes in and does an impromptu upgrade of the headquarters that the emotions work in. This upgrade is to make way for a series of new emotions, including Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Envy (Ayo Edebiri) and the most intense emotion of them all, Anxiety (Maya Hawke). All of these emotions turn up just as Riley is about to head off to a hockey camp weekend, which happens to be just when she’s starting the dreaded puberty. Things go from bad to worse when Anxiety fully takes over, sending all of the original emotions out into the wilderness where they’ll have to figure out how to restore Riley to her normal self before Anxiety fully takes over everything.

Much like the first movie, Inside Out 2 takes something that we all experience and creates a fascinating action comedy out of it. While the first movie dealt largely with depression, this film leans mostly towards Anxiety and the complex emotions that come along with puberty. Simple things we all experience like over-reacting emotionally without realizing it or the feeling of an anxiety attack are given animated life in a way that resonates better than it has any right to. It’s clear as day that the filmmakers put a ton of thought into how to best portray the lived reality of going through puberty with how the main emotions react. It takes ideas that are insanely complex and simplifies them without dumbing them down, it’s clear that once again they really listened to therapists to help make this make sense (there’s a moment where Joy is talking to Anxiety that is just verbatim something I’ve heard an actual therapist say, it’s that accurate).

While a few of the cast from the original didn’t return (apparently Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling weren’t offered a fair price to return, which sucks because if anyone can afford to pay their actors what they’re worth it’s the Disney/Pixar company), those who do are back in top form and all the new cast members bring everything they have. The obvious standout among the central voice cast is Maya Hawke as Anxiety, and while the emotion does technically count as an antagonist for most of Inside Out 2 (they create the main obstacle, they’re what needs to be stopped/controlled in order to help Riley, they are in effect creating all the problems) it’s never played that way. Anxiety feels like a character desperately trying to do what is best but unfortunately, they’re also catastrophising everything which can only backfire on them and Riley. It’s a fascinating performance that manages to sound like Anxiety is just barely holding it together and could lose it at any second, a perfect way to present the complex emotion.

It’s also hard to resist Inside Out 2‘s absolutely genius use of visual puns to help push the story, from a literal stream of consciousness to a sar-chasm the film takes full advantage of the medium of animation to create more than a few hilarious and wild set pieces almost entirely built around a pun or play on words. It also isn’t afraid to mix animation styles, having entire characters in the second half of the film that look like they’re 2D hand drawn or even ancient PS2 graphics and somehow makes them blend perfectly into this universe. Pixar films in general tend to look great, it’s more notable when they just look kind of average but this is Pixar pulling out all the stops. It’s like Pixar heard people suggest that it might be losing its touch and decided to remind everyone why they’re the best in the game, this is easily the best-looking Pixar film since Soul and unless we get a certain Spider-verse film out by the end of the year it feels like we’re looking at the inevitable Best Animated Film winner here because it’s just that damn good.

Now, while I will gleefully sing its praises loudly, I draw the line at suggesting that Inside Out 2 matches the sublime quality of the original, though that’s not because of anything that Inside Out 2 does wrong. Inside Out 2 just happens to be unlucky enough to be the sequel to one of the best films of the last decade, it’s a miracle that it’s even close to the same level of quality. Inside Out just had something special, a lightning-in-a-bottle quality that can’t be fully replicated but Inside Out 2 comes about as close as you could hope for by taking what worked about the first film and doing more of it. Having an entire film just exploring the emotion of Anxiety… well, after everything that’s happened between when the first movie came out and now, we’re all well acquainted with that feeling and this is the right time for a film to explore it.

Inside Out 2 is peak Pixar, delivering the laughs and the emotion in ways that come naturally to that wildly talented little studio. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s the kind of film where the youngest kids will enjoy the bright colours, the slightly older kids will enjoy the silly jokes and the adults will have a full existential crisis because they remember every single second of horror they felt going through puberty and now it’s put on the screen before them in glorious technicolour… so basically the perfect family film for a family who will probably need a whole bunch of therapy in the not too distant future. It’s genuinely great to see that Pixar regained its footing and managed to make this work. It’s hard to deny that I was anxious about them for a second but clearly, they understood how to put that emotion to rest.