Ivan Radford | On 29, Aug 2024

Director: Kelsey Mann
Cast: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale, Liza Lapira, Ayo Edebiri, Paul Walter Hauser, Adèle Exarchopoulos
Certificate: PG

“Riley’s life requires more sophisticated emotions than all of you,” declares Anxiety (Maya Hawke) partway through Inside Out 2. It’s a frank assessment of the challenge facing Pixar’s sequel, which attempts to follow up Inside Out’s simple but elegant allegory for the inner workings of our minds. Imagining it as a place where Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) work together in Riley’s nerve centre, it was a deceptively mature exploration of emotional and mental health. But as we follow Riley entering puberty, it quickly becomes clear that the script’s central concept is harder to reconcile with the messiness of life.

And so it’s only a matter of time until Riley’s inner control panel is removed to make way for an even bigger one, with room for four new emotions: Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Inevitably, the typically dominant Joy doesn’t take kindly to the newcomers, and what begins is a battle for control over Riley’s thoughts and actions.

Meanwhile, Riley (Kensington Tallman) is attending an ice hockey camp with her best friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green). There she hopes to get a place on the Fire Hawks, the team she dreams of joining one day – led by Val Ortiz (Lilimar), whom she can’t help but fangirl over. Just as they arrive at the camp, Riley discovers that Grace and Bree will not be going to the same high school as her. Facing the fear of loneliness – and under the scrutiny of the coach (Yvette Nicole Brown) and the gaze of Val’s teammates – Riley finds herself torn between who she is, who she wants to be and who other people think she is.

Enter Anxiety, whose presence is tailor-made for such moments. Anxiety has an ability to imagine every single possible worst thing that could happen in the future, so that Riley can do the right thing and make the right decision in the present. Maya Hawke is a hilarious addition to the motley ensemble, bringing a manic energy to Anxiety’s interactions and rapid gestures – like Amy Poehler’s exuberantly upbeat Joy, Hawke’s Anxiety is a perfect contrast to Phyllis Smith’s mumbling Sadness, and their one-liner quips are a delight. Tony Hale and Lewis Black are equally charming as the impatient Anger and desperate Fear, while Liza Lapira’s amusingly disdainful Disgust is a natural companion to the aloof Ennui, given a shrugging French boredom by Adèle Exarchopoulos. Paul Walter Hauser’s adorable embarrassment, meanwhile, warms the heart just by hiding constantly inside his hoodie.

Kelsey Mann’s direction is wonderfully inventive, blending animation styles as Joy and the other veteran emotions journey through the back of Riley’s mind – and, in an inspired moment, depicting a “sar-chasm” that opens up a gulf between what Riley says and what she means. The resulting mix of slapstick and wordplay, amplified by the number of other people’s minds we increasingly peek inside, means this sequel is as full of wonder as the first outing, distilling complicated ideas into accessible allegory – and so we explore how the brain handles painful memories and builds fundamental beliefs and values, while also chuckling at Ennui being nicknamed “Wee-Wee”.

And yet there’s still the challenge of that simplicity trying to explain the complexities of actual life – are we meant to understand that these nine emotions individually control everything Riley does? As the script continues to unpack the nuances of its own premise, it masterfully transcends it by rooting its story in Riley’s sense of self – something that she is still trying to form, something that is defined not by any one memory or feeling, but by all of them adding up to make one complete whole.

A heartbreaking climax involving a panic attack underlines that Anxiety can be a natural, if not essential, reaction and mechanism to cope with difficult situations – but that no single emotion should be elevated above all others. Indeed, scattered through the script are signs of the emotions learning from each other, as Anger is capable of calm, Joy is able to vent frustration and Embarrassment is able to be bold.

As Riley wavers between two senses of self – that she’s a good person, or that she’s a failure – Inside Out 2 emerges as a reminder that life is more sophisticated than five feelings, and that we can only grow to be who we are if we accept them all as valid. What a beautiful, thoughtful evolution of an already profound idea.

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