My daughter was 7 years old in 2015 when Inside Out premiered. She was a just few years younger than Riley, the main character whose emotions funneled the into adorable (and highly marketable) characters of Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness. Yet, the prototype was there. Fear mostly ran the control panel in my daughter’s mind for her early years with the others (mostly Anger) making guest appearances.
It’s entirely fitting that she sat next to me in my critics’ screening of the sequel, Inside Out 2, which sees Riley going through puberty. In fact, having lived through the early stages with her made the experience of Inside Out 2 all the richer and more rewarding. It’s as if someone made this film for me saying, “Hey, you made it through the beginning. Let’s laugh a bit, shall we?”
Inside Out 2 features Riley as a teenager navigating puberty in the summer just before high school. Showing promise in hockey, Riley and two friends are recruited to participate in the high school hockey coach’s summer camp where she would be evaluated and potentially scouted for early entry onto the high school team. The new experiences, of course, elicit a host of new emotions to join the original five of Amy Poehler’s Joy, Phyllis Smith’s Sadness, Lewis Black’s Anger, Tony Hale’s Fear (replacing Bill Hader), and Liza Lapira’s Disgust (replacing Mindy Kaling). Puberty introduces us to the Fraggle-like Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).
One of my few complaints of Pixar’s recent crop is that they’re solely focused on emotions. They desperately want to tug at your heart strings. They all feel fashioned by middle-aged (mostly) men looking to purge their souls of childhood trauma. The films seem to have lost moments of wonder, moments of spontaneity, and moments of broad humor.
Fortunately, Inside Out 2 corrects of a bit of that. Yes, it still has that trademark Pixar emotional tug at the heartstrings (I was fighting back tears by the end), but it’s also very funny along the way. There are a good amount of site gags and silly jokes to temper the deeper, darker moments of the plot. The human side of the plot is a fairly thin, Disney Channel-level story, but that’s not the point. The jokes come in the internal world of emotions, which is as vividly and imaginatively rendered as you remember, particularly a deep well that provides Riley with her “sense of self.”
Riley’s emotional journey sends the main five emotions on a traditional hero’s quest to retrieve her original sense of self that was damaged by Hawke’s Anxiety, and it plays out beautifully as an adventure. Of course, none of this would work without the stellar voice work, led here by newcomer Hawke (fantastically rendering a caffeinated jolt of anxious line readings) and Poehler. I’d forgotten just how fantastic Amy Poehler’s voice work can be. Here, she renders Joy as a character whose internal compass is jarred by self-doubt and an unclear path forward. She imbues the character with a boundless supply of energy and enthusiasm, and it emerges as some of the best work she’s ever done.
Granted, not everyone can have the experience that I’ve had with my daughter and enjoying Inside Out 2 with her. I would argue that there are many moments of (no pun intended) joy to be had for those without a hormonal teen under their roof. But, for me, the experience was deepened significantly just to have two hours together with her. As I see her grow and mature into a beautiful young woman, I am all too aware of the fleeting nature of those father-daughter bonding moments. One day, she’ll be gone, living a life of her own.
Until then, if we can love Inside Out 2 together, then I’m all the happier for it.
Inside Out 2 is now playing at a theater near you.
