'Inside Out 2' Review: Pixar’s Best Since 'Soul' Is a Joyfully Emotional Roller Coaster (2024)

When Pixar began making feature-length films in the mid-90s, they did so by utilizing ideas that were straightforward and brilliant, ideas that could be explained in one sentence—concepts which almost seemed even more impressive by the virtue that no one had turned them into a movie before at this level. What if toys were alive? What if monsters did exist? What would a superhero family look like? What…would happen if Owen Wilson was a car? These were smartly crafted films that led to success after success almost immediately for Pixar, leading to one of the most consistent runs from any studio in film history.

Yet in the last decade or so, many have said that it feels like Pixar has sort of dropped off. The original properties can be hit or miss and the sequels rarely live up to the originals. But in the last few years, it seems as though Pixar has taken a different approach to its stories: instead of turning cool concepts into animated classics, the studio has attempted to use its films to turn complex, difficult ideas into palatable entertainment. The successes have still been hit-or-miss, but the best of Pixar in the last few years have certainly leaned in on these more intricate ideas. Take, for example, Soul dissecting the simple joys that make life worth living and worth fighting for, Turning Red’s attempt to tell a story about a girl becoming a woman, and Toy Story 4’s way of taking characters we’ve loved for decades and trying to recontextualize their wants and needs away from parts of themselves they believed to be essential to their very being.

The latest in this list of Pixar’s best explorations of difficult ideas is Inside Out 2, Pixar’s best film since Soul in 2020. With 2015’s Inside Out, directed by Pixar mainstay Pete Docter, the movie showed how certain emotions can lead into others, such as sadness leading to joy, and how we often go through the process of rebuilding our core selves, evolving throughout our lives as things gain and lose importance to us. With Inside Out 2, directed by Kelsey Mann (who has been with Pixar since 2013), this inspection of emotions gets even more complicated, with a film that’s equally moving and hilarious, and reminds us of how great Pixar can be at the height of their powers.

What Is 'Inside Out 2' About?

A year has passed since we last saw Riley Anderson (voiced by Kensington Tallman), who is now a 13-year-old. While many things have stayed the same—she’s still very into hockey, close to her parents (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane), and a bit of a goofball—she’s also becoming a changing teenager. She now has braces, is getting ready for high school, and the emotions inside of her are startled by a new button on their console labeled “puberty.” For Riley and the emotions that are working inside her, this button means trouble.

This development within Riley coincides with her going to hockey camp, where she is stuck choosing whether she should spend time with her best friends Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), who are going to a different high school than Riley, or if she should spend time with the high school’s hockey star Valentina Ortiz (Lilimar), who starts taking Riley under her wing. Meanwhile, inside Riley, the emotions have been working together nicely. Joy (Amy Poehler) now understands the importance of Sadness (Phyllis Smith) while still leading the crew that includes Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Fear (Tony Hale). But just as this crew is working like a well-oiled machine, they’re introduced to a whole new host of emotions. Anxiety (Maya Hawke) tends to take over the controls a bit too often for Joy’s liking, while Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), show new sides of Riley to the old crew.

Whereas the first film focused on the idea of core memories that corresponded to personality islands that made Riley who she is, Inside Out 2 introduces the idea that some of Riley’s memories help her build her own belief system. At first, these memories are, well, exactly what you would expect when controlled by Joy, positive statements like, “I’m a good person,” and “I’m a good friend.” But with the introduction of these new emotions, Riley’s sense of self starts to shift, as her emotions become more sophisticated. At its center, Inside Out 2 becomes about the struggles of growing into adulthood, where the fundamental things we know about ourselves make way for difficult decisions, questionable choices, and completely new feelings that we all have to learn to handle on the way to becoming a fully-formed adult.

'Inside Out 2' Makes Complex Personal Changes Into an Entertaining Film

Kelsey Mann, along with writers Meg LeFauve (who cowrote Inside Out) and Dave Holstein (creator and showrunner of the Showtime series Kidding) manage to turn what could be an overwhelming task of so many emotions and feelings, into an easily manageable look at the complexity of this difficult time in any kid’s life. Much like the first film, this leads to the emotions going on an adventure through Riley’s mind, but this time, it’s the original five emotions working together, while the new emotions have their own story to tell. This structure reinforces the bond of the first five emotions that we never quite got in the first film, and gives the new emotions enough time to set up their dynamics. And the fact that these dual emotional stories are all intersecting with Riley’s external narrative in riveting and compelling ways is a testament to how well-considered and put -together this screenplay truly is.

Also considering that Inside Out 2 is doubling its cast, both in terms of the people Riley is interacting with and the number of emotions, it’s remarkable that the film never feels overloaded. Hawke is certainly the standout here, as essentially a more manic version of Fear that essentially fears the possibilities of the future. While she’s certainly the biggest antagonist to Joy’s sense of order with the emotions, Anxiety never feels like a villain, but rather, an understandable approach to viewing things, given the developments in Riley’s life. Edebiri is a delight, a wide-eyed source of jealousy and desires, Exarchopoulos is a melancholy approach to boredom that’s never boring, and Hauser can present quite a bit while barely having any dialogue.

But it’s mostly great to see those original five emotions make their way through Riley together, considering they were mostly split up throughout the first film. We begin to see how these emotions have elements of each other after all this time together. For example, Anger has moments to show off his lighthearted nature that seem like Joy rubbing off on him, while Joy has started to see the importance of even the more negative emotions just as she's reckoning with the frustration that the new emotions are causing her. For Joy—thanks to a fantastic performance by Poehler—she starts to understand that she can’t always protect Riley from her evolving into her own person, and that realization is a fascinating approach to Inside Out 2’s larger themes.

'Inside Out 2' Is Structurally Similar to the First Film, but Its Ideas and Emotions Bring New Life

Since Riley is changing, Joy and her crew’s adventure is constantly throwing new obstacles at her, and old places we visited in the first film are reconfigured in new ways. The film has a lot of fun taking concepts and visualizing them in charming fashion, such as turning “stream of consciousness” into an actual stream, or making imagination into an office of over-worked animators. Like with the first film, this sequel is having a lot of punny fun with bringing these things to life, but they always exist to aid the story, rather than just feeling like smart gags that are crammed into the narrative.

Yet Inside Out 2 also falls to a similar issue that has occurred with other Pixar sequels, such as Toy Story 2 and Finding Dory, amongst others, where the story often follows the same beats as the original film. Naturally, the film isn’t hitting every moment once more, but the structure of the story can feel a bit similar, including moments that can’t help but remind of some of the more emotional scenes from its predecessor. It’s not a damning criticism by any stretch, and these moments work beautifully, but if you’ve recently watched the first film, it’s hard not to see the resemblance in the bones of these two films.

But it’s equally hard not to be impressed by what Inside Out 2 is pulling off here, balancing so many different threads and perplexing feelings into a cohesive story that also manages to be entertaining from beginning to end. While this sequel might not hit the highs of Inside Out, the ambition and development of this world and characters make it feel like an important chapter to this story that needed to be told. Inside Out 2 almost reminds of films like Toy Story 2, Before Midnight, or Furiosa, which might not live up to the original, but are extensions that feel essential to this story that we wouldn’t want to do without. Inside Out 2 adds layers we didn’t see coming with the first film, but it can’t help but feel like a natural progression for where this story should go.

From this great voice cast to Mann’s direction of LeFauve and Holstein’s bold script to Andrea Datzman’s tremendous score that builds on Michael Giacchino’s gorgeous work in subtle and brilliant ways, Inside Out 2 is by far one of Pixar’s best sequels. Not only does it prove that they can still do high-concept ideas with style, but they can also reinvigorate their existing properties to truly staggering degrees. Inside Out 2 manages to capture all the eccentricities, complexities, and decisions that make us who we are, and turn that into one of Pixar’s best in years. What a joy it is to watch them do it.

REVIEW

Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2 takes complex ideas and emotions and turns them into a delightful animated adventure, and one of Pixar's best films in years.

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Pros

• Inside Out 2 takes particularly difficult ideas and manages to make them palatable to a larger audience.
• The voice cast, both new and old, are doing excellent work throughout.
• Inside Out 2 is back to making its audience cry again.

Cons

• Some of the story beats occasionally feel a bit too similar to the first film.

Inside Out 2 comes to theaters in the U.S. on June 14. Click below for showtimes near you.

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