Towards the end of “Inside Out 2”, as the film launched into its dual climaxes, I began to figure out a dichotomy that was causing a mild sense of discomfort throughout much of the running time. This latest entry in the Pixar canon, coming almost a decade after its predecessor, is a sequel to the 2025 hit “Inside Out” where a quintet of varying emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust) helps a young girl, Riley, to navigate her life. In the sequel, Riley is now a 13-year-old on the brink of her high-school life struggling with changes, both external (new friends, and the threat of high-school) and internal (puberty and new emotions). Helping Riley to navigate her life poses a new challenge – for her, and the emotions within her.
Pixar sequels have enjoyed a complicated critical and commercial history, and even as they are ostensibly considered as easy choices for creators afraid to try new things, the dynamics of “Inside Out 2” mean that it’s not exactly following a well-worn and familiar path. It’s an awareness that screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein, and director Kelsey Mann immediately identify as an opening catch-up informs us of how Riley’s life has changed. The overt structure of the film is the same, but the actual reveals itself as more complicated, ambitious, and sometimes discordant than the first.
Like the first film, Riley is the site for the film’s goals. It is a communal move to ensure that Riley is her best self. But she is not our main character. Like the first film, it is her emotion Joy (winningly played by Amy Poehler) that is most central. And although the bifurcation of the world outside Riley and the world inside Riley is maintained, this sequel leans more into the idea of the schism between who Riley is and who her emotions want her to be. This is intrinsic to some of the most compelling, and more complicated, aspects of “Inside Out 2”. I suspect it’s also been intrinsic to an under-reading of the film, too.
Early on, the film’s major plot-point is established – Riley is undergoing puberty. This complication acts as the impetus for the other major plot-point in the film. A teenaged Riley has more emotionally complex needs, which require more emotionally complex emotions. Ennui, Envy, Embarrassment and Anxiety enter the picture and the last two of the quartet take violent ownership of Riley. But who is Riley? Are we led by our emotions or are emotions influenced by ourselves? How does that work? This is the kind of philosophically fraught reality that has been central to numerous Pixar works, earning it an existence as a studio that can charm children while offering complex work that rewards multiple viewings, and adult engagement.
But the world of 2024 is a very different time for Pixar than it was in 2015. The movie world has changed, as much as Pixar’s place in it. It is hard not to feel circumspect about recent comments from Pixar President Jim Morris decrying the personalised and autobiographical drive of their recent stories (citing multi-ethnic tales like “Coco” and “Turning Red”) and wishing for a return to more ‘universal stories’ – a phrase that suggests many concerning things. And it’s understandable why “Inside Out 2” feels limited to those readings and why so many have felt compelled to read it through the lens of “Turning Red”, which also deals with female puberty. But it also felt like a reductive window into the rarity of female-focused Pixar films. “Brave” (2012) was the first of such film, and since then male stories have still outweighed the women. But even though the two films are bound by nominally being about puberty, little in “Inside Out 2” feels bound to the dynamics of “Turning Red”.
It is dismal to imagine that the existence of one precludes the thrills and charms of the other. “Inside Out 2” isn’t really about Riley.
At the end of the credits of “Inside Out 2” there is a line that puts this into perspective for me: “The film is dedicated to our kids, we love you just the way you are.” It’s a line that acts in an also metatextual way offering an avenue that might explain away a lot of the film. But it’s a moment that makes me think of “Inside Out 2” as less about a film about the children, than a film about those who act as caretakers for children. Whether they are actual parents, or emotions acting as parents. The most meaningful moment in the film – the moment that made me realise what the most important crisis here is – is an action, not a line, a moment I am wont to spoil but depends on Joy stepping back from managing Riley and giving her the chance to grow on her own. That this moment comes with a profound act of choosing where Riley calls for a certain emotion to take control, feels like a meaningful metaphor with thrilling effect. It’s one of several emotionally climactic moments where “Inside Out 2” is different and more profound than its predecessor, even as it follows a through-line that is more complicated, messier and more frenetic than it was before.
What makes a good movie? In many ways, one might say “Inside Out 2” is not as sharp as “Inside Out”. This new film is less adept at its pacing, it wrestles with queries of identifying character arcs and there are numerous things that might function as loose ends in its larger narrative. Maya Hawke’s Anxiety is arguably her strongest filmic work, even as the film struggles with figuring out how to distil the characters’ biggest paradoxes. But there are so many wonderful things to extract from art and there is a metatextual charm in how the messiness of Riley becomes intrinsic to the similar schematic ways that “Inside Out 2” devolves. I am forever partial to films that feel like they dare to do something, even when their reach might exceed their grasp.
This new film might be less easily enjoyable, but it feels larger and stirringly sincere in what it attempts to do. In some ways, I found myself more moved this time around. More than many Pixar films before, the central arc of “Inside Out 2” speaks more to the adults than the audience. Riley as the site of action is a sleight-of-hand. Children will identify with the moments of coming-of-age, but the film’s real heart is in the way the emotions around her function as parent-like adults struggling to let go of this girl they care so much for.
In a moment of deep sadness and emotion, Joy begins to lament that she cannot stop Anxiety. Perhaps as we grow older, we find less use for Joy, she says. The moment feels like one the filmmakers are prideful of, even self-satisfied, but it also is one that feels sincerely profound. And it’s a profundity that I suspect will mean more to adults than children. The lady next to me, with her children in tow, gasped. The children seemed nonplussed. I smiled to myself. Riley’s bifurcation between childhood and puberty leaves her occasionally uncertain as to who she is, and “Inside Out 2” feels like it’s caught in that same web; compelled by the more esoteric but aware of its own roots. I don’t know what the future of Pixar holds, but there’s so much to value in “Inside Out 2”. Riley’s puberty is central to the dynamics set-up, but more than anything it feels like a valuable film about the importance of letting go.
Inside Out 2 is playing in cinemas
