By Sandra Hall
INSIDE OUT 2 ★★★½
(PG) 96 minutes
When Pixar’s Inside Out was released in 2015, it was hailed as the most sophisticated of the studio’s impressive collection of animated features – a bold attempt to get inside the head of a pre-teen and map the network of conflicting emotions that marked her coming of age.
Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) face an alarming new reality: everything is changing now Riley is 13.
It was more than five years in the making. There were numerous re-writes involving consultations with psychologists and neuroscientists, and visual metaphors were invented and discarded as the studio’s animators set about drawing up a cartoon landscape showing the workings of an adolescent mind. But eventually, it paid off. The film became one of Pixar’s greatest success stories.
Now comes the encore, undertaken according to the Hollywood commandment that decrees every victory must be exploited to the max. And in this case, there’s an added incentive. Pixar has yet to escape the post-pandemic doldrums. It desperately needs a hit.
When we left Riley, the film’s adolescent lead, at the end of the first film, she had found new friends and shaken off the blues brought on by her family’s disorienting move to another state. Since then, she’s become her ice hockey team’s star performer and along with her besties, Bree (voiced by Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu), has been selected to go on a prestigious hockey camp. Riley is also turning 13. Puberty has arrived and a revolution is about to break out among her guiding emotions.
Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who have been skilfully running the show with a little help – not too much – from Fear, Disgust and Anger, are being challenged by a new team. Anxiety (Maya Hawke) is now in the cockpit and anything could happen.
The first film was conceived and directed by Pixar’s creative chief, Pete Docter, inspired by observations of his young daughter. He handed the new film on to Kelsey Mann, a writer and storyboard artist making his feature debut as a director, but the style hasn’t changed. The scenes in the outer world are modelled on the CGI animation style familiar from Toy Story and Up, while the scenes inside Riley’s head have an ultra-bright glow and a palette of saturated colours.
Anxiety is an orange creation who looks as if she’s controlled by an invisible cat’s cradle of rubber bands. She’s all twitches and grimaces in startling contrast to Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), a purplish figure who stirs from the couch only when a crisis requires her to depress the situation. Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) is another recessive character – a blushing giant who vanishes into his hoodie after the few occasions on which he’s forced to say or do something.
The plot revolves around the basic moral dilemma faced by Riley (Kensington Tallman) when her idol, Val (Lilimar), the hockey camp champion, takes her up. Does she join Val’s group or stay true to her old friends? This dilemma creates havoc at Emotions HQ. Riley’s memory bank is thrown into turmoil and Joy and team have to navigate a minefield in a storyline that expands the scenario inside Riley’s head at the expense of the narrative strands based in the real world.
You miss the interaction between inside and outside and the interior realm’s new complexities are unnecessarily confusing. The Emotions are a lot of fun, partly because the voice work is so funny and distinctive, but the geographical features of the candy-coloured land they inhabit are so lacking in variety it’s easy to lose your bearings. Movement and action are not the same thing. Nor are suspense and freneticism and, sadly, the point of all this effort gets lost amid the hustle and bustle.
Inside Out 2 is released in cinemas on June 13.
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