Riley's Head

As Riley grows older, the denizens of her brain increase in 2024's Inside Out 2. Now as Disney enters an era of desperate sequels, this one at least feels natural and the idea of exploring how someone's emotions change as they hit puberty is a good one. The first film even teased the idea at the end. However, the new film switches up directing duties from the lauded and experienced Pete Docter to first time helmer Kelsey Mann. This was also Mann's first screenplay and his co-writers, with the exception of Meg LeFauve, are also newcomers who were uninvolved with the first film. So the writing on the second film feels a bit amateurish with excessive exposition applied to fill out the story. But I liked the new Anxiety character voiced by Maya Hawke.

I started watching the first Inside Out earlier this year and I hated it so much I had to stop. But since I wanted to see the sequel, I went back to it and decided to muscle through it. And it turned out I actually liked the bulk of the movie quite a bit, particularly the imaginary friend character called Bing Bong, voiced by Richard Kind. The first movie never felt the need to explain what it meant that Joy and Sadness were at odds, that Bing Bong had a crucial role to play in Riley's emotional growth. It was like reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman; the metaphors just functioned so perfectly you never had to stop and have it explained to you, and doing so would have killed a lot of nuance.

The second film doesn't succeed quite so well at this and there are constantly moments when the emotion characters find some new place or gadget and they're compelled to explain to each other precisely how it translates to what Riley's actually going through.

But even though Anxiety and the other new emotions are kind of set up as villains, I liked how not everything Anxiety compelled Riley to do was bad. Anxiety has Riley showing up to school early to practice harder for her hockey team, a useful idea for anyone looking to achieve a goal. Hawke's performance was never too extreme. A lot of performers would've assumed Anxiety would be screaming all the time but Hawke adopts this steady, reasonable tone even as she's explaining how Riley must do something extreme.

Considering puberty is the central focus of the film, it is a bit odd that the film totally avoids Riley thinking about dating and boys (or girls). We see inside one boy's head that he panics at having to talk to a girl but that's the entirety of sexual preoccupation presented in the film. I suppose Disney balked at the idea that a girl might ever have impure thoughts. But I suppose that's the modern Puritan culture.

So it's not a terrible film, it just doesn't compare well to the first, which adds to an impression of Pixar's decline.

Inside Out 2 is available on Disney+.