‘Inside Out 2’ review: This time with even more feeling

No need to panic. Inside Out 2 joins the ranks of Toy Story 2 as a Pixar sequel you can actually feel good about.

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What is going on in that person’s head? That’s the opening question of Inside Out, which came out in 2015 to much critical acclaim. Nine years later, Pixar is getting back in our heads with Inside Out 2, a direct sequel that gets to skip a lot of the complicated explanations and “here’s how this works” tutorials in favor of putting audiences through a 96-minute therapy session, and all for the price of a single movie ticket. Not bad.

Inside Out 2 picks up two years later with Riley now 13 and about to undergo puberty, so naturally the film uses a literal siren to alarm her emotions. That’s right, Joy and Sadness and Fear and Anger and Disgust are all back — though some with new voice actors — but a few things have changed. For one thing, Riley now has a “sense of self,” in which some of her memories sprout connective lines that represent how she views herself as a person. She does a good deed for someone, so her sense of self echoes “I’m a good friend” throughout her “Belief System.”

“Riley’s life requires more sophisticated emotions than all of you.”

Additionally, Riley has new emotions, a concept the previous film explored in preproduction before streamlining to the core five. Well, it’s a sequel, so might as well branch out. There’s Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke), who is similar to Fear, except she wants to protect Riley from things she can’t see. There’s also Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). Together under Anxiety’s leadership, they “bottle up” the other emotions by using a literal bottle so that they can help Riley change her sense of self and become cool enough to fit in with some new friends at hockey camp.

Sure, it sounds incredibly low stakes, but tell that to the weeping audience in my movie theater. Inside Out 2 is disarming in the sense that its zany plotting and seemingly endless puns are all in service of that stereotypical Pixar gut punch at the end. It has a grueling message about self-acceptance complemented by a seriously realistic depiction of anxiety, to the point where they might as well call this a Psychology Today biopic.

And as mentioned at the jump, this is pretty much a Toy Story 2 situation, in that the sequel is funnier than the original without sacrificing any of the pathos. In fact, Inside Out 2 is better than the original in a lot of ways: it’s sharper, tighter, and a bit more confident in its maturity. Sure, a lot of people needed the first movie to grapple with the concept of embracing sadness, but Inside Out 2 couples that with the natural next step: embracing the limits of who you are as a person.

“You can’t just bottle us up!”

Surprisingly, the film boasts a mostly different creative team. This is Kelsey Mann’s directorial debut, replacing Pete Docter and co-writing with Meg LeFauve from the first film along with Dave Holstein. Despite this, Inside Out 2 seamlessly continues the story’s clever writing and wildly imaginative setting, though some viewers might be a little sad that we don’t spend too much time in varying locations in Riley’s head.

But on the flip side, Disgust and Fear and Anger get much more time to shine in the sequel, with Liza Lapira and Tony Hale replacing Mindy Kaling and Bill Hader as Disgust and Fear, respectively. Though that’s not to say the film gives us any less of Amy Poehler’s infectious enthusiasm as Joy or Phyllis Smith’s effortless charm as Sadness. And yes, Lewis Black is still the perfect embodiment of Anger, no notes.

The bottom line.

We also get much more time with…well, Riley! One thing the first Inside Out sort of avoided, maybe out of shyness, was giving us more of Riley’s life as a holistic character. It was always a weird thought experiment, in that her emotions look out for her, but they also control her. So what is it about Riley that makes her…her? The sequel actually comments on this weirdness directly and simply gives us more time in the real world to witness the consequences of Anxiety pulling a coup, essentially. Kensington Tallman voices Riley this time around and gives a seriously believable performance as an overall decent kid who can be an extremely awkward, manic teenager at times. She has far more personality this time, and that helps us care just a tiny bit more about what Joy and the rest of the emotions are getting up to.

And you know what, it’s nice to have a villain this time around. Sure, Anxiety is more of an antagonist, not an “evil” emotion, but considering the character’s relatability (for the parents and other older viewers, at least), it’s certainly a baddie up there with the likes of Scar. Because of the, uh, emotional scars. Sure. Sorry, my own Embarrassment is taking the wheel from here on out.

Inside Out 2 opens in theaters on June 14. Watch the trailer here.

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Images courtesy of Disney/Pixar. Read more articles by Jon Negroni here.