When 13-year old Riley Anderson (voiced by Kensington Tallman) helps her hockey team win a local championship, Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) approaches her to extend an invite to her skills camp. As if the excitement and pressure wasn’t enough from the opportunity, Riley officially enters puberty, sending her into chaos literally hours before the camp starts. Her childhood emotions of Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) try to help her navigate this new stage but they find themselves joined by new emotions Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). In an effort to help Riley cope with her new stage in life, the new emotions deem the original ones less important and take over, turning the new teenager into something unrecognizable. Eventually they realize they all have to work together to turn Riley into her best self.
Nine years ago, the original INSIDE OUT proved that depicting emotions on screen can be a very tricky undertaking. Yet it pulled it off with flawless execution, bringing the audience to its emotional knees along the way. This second installment is an admirable follow up, perfectly capturing the essence, rollercoaster and unpredictability of puberty on multiple levels.
Kelsey Mann (in her feature film directoral debut) manages to deliver a multi-faceted story without prejudice to the viewers age. Teenagers will enjoy the story because they’ll feel seen, pre-teens will enjoy the story because they’ll appreciate being prepared, adults will enjoy story because they’ll remember those days and parents will enjoy the story because they’re dealing/will deal/have dealt with their kids going through this difficult phase.
After ELEMENTAL (2023) and LIGHTYEAR (2022), an undercurrent of concern began to emerge about Disney/Pixar films. Did they still “have it?” The overwhelming pull on audience heart strings, the deep sense of relatability and intense-but-fun character development. These were hallmarks of the Pixar catalog and, while enjoyable, their two most recent films wrestled with those a bit more than expected. It’s not as good as the original and it’s not as powerful as TOY STORY, WALL-E, UP or COCO, but INSIDE OUT 2 brings those Pixar hallmarks back in glorious fashion. This is a movie for everyone.
JKG SCORE: 7.5
Untitled Film Project 