Inside Out 2: Gettng All the Feels and More

The little voices inside Riley’s head know her inside and out–but next summer, everything changes when Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2 introduces a new Emotion: Anxiety.

REVIEW:

Anxiety (Maya Hawke) crashes the picture and takes over all other feelings in Inside Out 2, perhaps the most literal, emotionally speaking, of any Pixar movie. Animated emotions inside behind the eyes and the fearful teen world of new friends, school and other such things outside. Nothing new, except erupting feels here. Pixar is not messing with success or fixing what is broken.

Inside Out 2 both needs and has to explains its emotional states for the benefit of the little humans just starting to develop theirs, the teens feeling new confusing ones, and the grownups who supposedly have developed fully formed feels. Being PG the truly adult emotions- irritation, pride, envy, greed, gloom, despair, depression and most of all, horny libido- are sent to the cutting room floor. This might be female puberty coming but no menses or tampons will be seen or known of. Nostalgia (June Squibb) does show up as a dumpy old white-haired grandmother with rose tinted glasses and stars in her eyes but is quickly shooed away. It’s not her time yet. Other briefer emotions will pop up as monuments and obstacles to work around.

Anxiety’s take over banishes the other emotions responsible for Riley (Kensington Tallman) Sense of Self to the Back of Her Mind. Those are the leader, Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira). The new ones that are causing emotional wreckage and will eventually harmonize into a semi functioning and somewhat happy teen :Anxiety (Maya Hawke), a carrot-colored sprite with jumpy eyebrows and excitable hair, Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), the studiously weary, French-accented Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Instead of crushes and boy gossip, the sequel follows Riley attempt to make and deal with the pressures of making a hockey team.

The movie is gentle and careful in the way it shifts through emotional struggles. There is a patience of a knowing parent in the way the director, Kelsey Mann develops the story. Riley is always displayed as relatable, but ordinary, and her friends are the same. They are forgiving and understanding, instantly willing to hug things out. Pixar movie’s exist to pull the audience into the sentimental group hug, the after glow of which is well-earned nostalgia. The studio lives to turn images into poignant stories that stick in the unconscious sublime.