‘Inside Out 2’ Review – Emotion Overload

Released nine years after the first film, Inside Out 2 takes place two years after the events of Inside Out. Riley (Kensington Tallman) is now 13-years-old. She gets invited to a high school hockey camp with her best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu).

Making the high school hockey team, the Fire Hawks, would make Riley’s transition from middle school to high school much more accessible, especially since Bree and Grace reveal they will attend a different high school.

Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Fear (Tony Hale) have learned to work together, with Joy still taking the lead. With Riley beginning puberty, new emotions start to take control: Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

As Riley begins to discover her true sense of self, Anxiety leads the new emotions in an attempt to turn her into everything she hasn’t been in the past 13 years.

Mindy Kaling and Bill Hader didn’t return as Disgust and Fear because of salary disputes. In retrospect, Amy Poehler received $5 million with additional bonuses to return as Joy, while Kaling and Hader were only offered $100,000. After seeing the film, Joy is still the lead character, while Fear and Disgust have a handful of lines and are co-supporting characters at best.

While Joy doesn’t try to keep Riley’s experiences purely one emotion-related anymore, she is still in charge and the main one in control of the emotion console. The biggest issue this sequel has is that many of the story beats are similar to the original film.

To compensate for not seeing her best friends every day, and starting over from scratch at a new school, Anxiety attempts to make Riley something she isn’t. This situation is almost exactly the same as Joy attempting to make every aspect of Riley’s life joyful in the first film.

She has less screen time and less dialogue, but Sadness at least feels like a critical emotion in Inside Out 2. Her infiltration of headquarters and connection with Embarrassment is the most significant factor in bringing Joy and the others back to take control.

The Vault, where Joy and the others are sent to while Anxiety tries to steer Riley in an unwanted direction, is intriguing. Bloofy, a dog character from Riley’s favorite childhood TV show; Pouchy, a floating, talking pouch with limitless supplies; and Deep Dark Secret are all entertaining characters.

Bloofy has the most dialogue in his scenes, where he seems to be talking to the audience but actually talks to the wall, which is one of the funniest parts of the film.

Nostalgia (June Squibb) has two scenes totaling 60 seconds long, yet she is one of the most memorable. Anxiety and Envy feel almost like the same character. Their voices sound the same, and their intentions are identical.

Embarrassment has one line of dialogue for a reason. Ennui’s lack of interest in everything and French accent make her the most enjoyable of the new emotions.

Pouchy is the most useful of the three, while Deep Dark Secret has the most appealing character design. Deep Dark Secret looks like the character Dark from Netflix’s animated film Orion and the Dark, which Embarrassment’s Paul Walter Hauser also voiced.

However, none of these characters offer anything Bing Bong didn’t establish in the first film. Pouchy’s helpful nature is a reformatted version of Bing Bong’s rocket wagon.

There’s an effort to world-build other aspects of Riley’s mind by introducing a Sense of Self, a Sar-chasm, and a Stream of Consciousness, but none of these concepts feel worthy enough to carry a 90-minute film.

Even the film’s finale seems to revolve around the same lesson learned at the end of Inside Out: One emotion can’t control every aspect of Riley’s life, and she has to be in charge of making her own decisions, especially as she gets older.

Inside Out 2 is a harmless sequel that is fun for all ages but also absolutely unnecessary. The film recycles three-quarters of the original while introducing a quarter of new characters and ideas.

Pixar used to be a refreshing animation studio overflowing with humor and creativity that often catered to adults. The decision to primarily focus on sequels is disheartening, especially if we have more of this formulaic cloning in future films to look forward to.

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