★★★★

Nine years have ebbed and flown since our last visit to Riley’s mind, the setting of Pete Docter’s groundbreaking animation Inside Out. They’ve not been kind. Not universally so and certainly not for the studio that made said film. The signs of a heyday past were already well felt in the Pixar production line, even before their pandemic woes. Streaming has been but the cherry on the Disney stewed ratatouille. In short, Pixar haven’t had a hit since 2019. It’s a Dug eat Dug world out there and the stakes could hardly be higher. Thank goodness for Inside Out 2.

Much as the trend to mark each new Pixar release with comment on the studio’s decline in fortune and quality is tiresome, there’s pertinence here. From debutant director Kelsey Mann, Inside Out 2 sees a bright young protégée laid to waste by internal turmoil. As things spiral, anxiety takes hold and inspires a series of deeply poor decisions. Familiar, no? There’s a running gag too about unwelcome appearances from nostalgia, although perhaps that’s more pointed for Disney. In depressing recent remarks, Andrew Stanton might have poured cold water on creative expression but at least promised that Pixar would not turn to live action remakes. Not yet.

Sequels – more specifically, looking backwards – are, of course, no long term solution for Pixar. That said, Inside Out did always lend itself to the option. It was in the final frames of that film that the puberty klaxon, which comes to life in the opening of part two, first appears. Riley was twelve, now she’s thirteen. Brace yourself. The little girl of 2015, whose childhood was saved by the union of Amy Poehler’s Joy and Phyllis Smith’s Sadness, is now a truculent, turbulent, temperamental teen, beset with broader and more complex emotions. Frankly, Bing Bong won himself a lucky escape.

Given the diversity of the pubescent experience, Mann’s film does a fair job at nailing the core – and closest to common – facets. These being Ennui, Embarrassment, Envy and Anxiety, each designed akin to an extra from the Jim Henson workshop. Such is the quality and definition of the animation that the characters share the Muppet’s texture and weight exactly. The casting, too, is exceptional. To Anxiety, Maya Hawke brings a tremendously scratchy neediness, while Adèle Exarchopoulos proves an inspired choice for Ennui, her lines drawled and French in accent. Boredom has never stirred such amusement. Ayo Edebiri practically pops as – and with – Envy, while Paul Walter Hauser makes the most of a micro-part in Embarrassment, an emotion too crippled with its own social discomfort to speak at all through much of the film.

Curiously, the actual plot here is markedly similar to that of its predecessor. As before, an essential component of Riley’s being is ejected from the headquarters of her mind. Joy, Sadness, Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale, replacing Bill Hader) and Disgust (Liza Lapira, replacing Mindy Kaling) must navigate the archives of memory and imagination to get it back. Such familiarity does, however, allow nuanced shifts in the adolescent psyche to reveal themselves. There are endless sight and scripted gags to keep things peppy – not least a ‘sar-chasm’ – and dazzling visuals to ignite one’s own burgeoned imagination.

Nothing in Inside Out 2 will, as was the case in the first, reduce audiences to puddles. And yet, an emotionally smart script by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein taps into an era that rings perceptively true. Early in the film, Riley’s emotional headquarters are torn asunder by her own internal demolition crew. They carry a sign that reads: ‘mind the dust, puberty is messy’. It’s all too true but, when it comes to the feels, Inside Out 2 cleans up. Terrific.

T.S.