I don’t have to probe the inner most reaches of my brain to know that I’ve adled this question before – but was anyone else feeling that the continued assault of COVID and the subsequent banishment of Pixar premiers to Disney+ has resulted to the animation giant losing a sizable portion of its sheen? Oh sure, a string of releases that included Lightyear, Elemental and Soul still brought the boundless imagination and near-perfect world building the studio is rightly renowned for, but the only release in the past coue of years that really managed to catch my attention was Turning Red, Pixar’s ballsy attempt to address female puberty by using were-pandas as an incredibly original metaphor.
Well guess what, teenage girls plunging headlong into puberty seems to have saved Pixar once again as Inside Out 2 takes a throwaway joke from the first movie and instead of having us experience what maturity does to a girl’s body, we now get to see what it does to her mind – eg. utterly screw it up spectacularly.
Children’s film or parental aid? Pixar once again forges ahead with both.
Riley is now thirteen and is living in a relative state of emotional harmony thanks to Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust all finding a nice balance as they guide her through life. In fact, things seem to be going extra well as the teen and her two best friends are headed off to a weekend hockey camp where there’s a good chance she will find the path that will guide her throug her first couple of years at high school.
Meanwhile, inside her head, Joy is proud of the new section of her mind known as the “sense of self” which governs what kind of person Riley is, but the reason it’s so abnormally healthy is that the emotions have been jettisoning less desirable memories whenever they occur in order to keep it pure. This of course backfires horribly once Riley’s puberty alarm goes off and before Joy and the gang can brace themselves, their headquarters is demolished nine order to make room for four new emotions who now get to share the running of Riley’s brain.
Enter Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui, who show up and immediately start screwing with Joy’s benevolent stranglehold of Riley’s emotional state with Anxiety in particular making a major play for control.
However, after clashing with her new peers, a somewhat out of control Anxiety makes a power play and has the original five emotions literally bottled up and removed from headquarters, leaving her and her fellow newcomers to govern all of Riley’s decisions.
Of course, anyone who’s met a teenager before knows that being entirely governed by Anxiety is a disaster just waiting to happen, so in order to save Riley’s sense of self, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust have to escape and go on a quest before their thirteen year-old host has a complete and utter breakdown.
When Inside Out first burst onto the scene back in 2015, it was an act of Pixar world building that far surpassed anything they’d given us before. Sure, a world where toys are alive or a dystopian future that breeds an adorable, robotic love affair is impressive and all, but this movie went all out to show us a world where feelings have feelings. The result was possibly one of the animation studio’s most impressive endeavors that not only was devastatingly smart, but transcended the nature of a simple “kids movie” to be instructive and moving on an incredibly vast amount of levels. With this in mind, a sequel could never possibly hope to contend with this amount of raw innovation, especially as any news of a new Pixar sequel are mostly treated with suspicion in case they end up marring a beloved original.
However, in an act of self awareness worthy of their nearly thirty year history, the makers of Inside Out 2 are perfectly aware that they can’t possibly hope to match the brains of the original, so intead of trying to beat it, they simply build on it with the simplest of premises – puberty baby. The world and the characters largely remain the same – Amy Poehler’s Joy is still an overwhelmingly positive, well-meaning control freak, Phyllis Smith’s Sadness is still an endearing downer and the other members of the gang stick to the script despite some changes in the cast. However, it’s the new members that galvanise proceedings. Led by Maya Hawke’s frizzy-haired, bug eyed Anxiety whose attempts to steer Riley personality a certain way are born from a desire to protect her may be a slight shift from Joy’s plot arc from before, but it’s just different enough to give everything a brand new spin. Similarly, Joy and Sadness’ buddy movie thread has now been upped to the entire original gang having to try and find their way back to headquarters, adequately giving us that same-but-different feel that all sequels usually require.
The result is hardly what you’d call innovative, but the fact that Inside Out 2 has such a simple concept (again – puberty) means it can get down to the brass tacks of flinging in some great characters, some great jokes and some typically emotionally scarring moments that Pixar always seem to excell at. A running gag about pop culture characters whom Riley still secretly likes being kept in an actual vault is a banger, with a video game hero she had a crush on being rendered in PS1 style graphics.
However, in among the jokes a prat falls, Pixar keenly keeps one eye firmly on what it’s like to try and push through the agonising uncertainty and desperation of entering this phase of life which is recreated in such unnerving detail, adults will no doubt be squirming in the throes of uncomfortable flashbacks while pre-teen will undoubtedly be terrified of the conflicting shit their emotions are about to put them through.
While some may feel that Inside Out 2 coasts a little too close to the plot of the first film for comfort and others may think that Riley’s plot thread might be a bit too ice hockey centric to play to non-sporty kids (seriously – there’s so much ice hockey), the range of new faces means that the movie still has some important things to teach; especially during these times where being in a constant state of anxiety about virtually everything seems to be the norm.
Playing the sequel game to the absolute letter, Inside Out 2 nevertheless validates its existence by eloquently and entertainingly reminding people of all ages that it’s ok not to be ok.
I second that emotion.
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