Inside Out 2
Director: Kelsey Mann
Writer: Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein
Sequel to: Inside Out
Cast: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paul Walter Hauser, Yvette Nicole Brown
Seen on: 2.10.2024

Plot:
Riley (Kensington Tallman) is just about to start high school, and has to contend with the fact that her two best friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) will be going to different schools than her. But before that, they will go to hockey camp together. Just before they leave, though, an alarm goes off in Riley’s head – unbeknownst to her, but quite literally: puberty is starting! That means absolute upheaval including the fact that Joy (Amy Poehler) who just settled into her role in charge, gets ousted by Anxiety (Maya Hawke). Maybe even for good.

Inside Out 2 has been a long time coming, and is a welcome sequel to a favorite animation movie of mine. It continues to be charming and insightful, albeit without taking many risks when it comes to characters or narration.

Once Inside Out 2 starts, it is pretty obvious how things will develop and what emotional points we will pass along the way. That the film is this predictable, doesn’t mean that it is ineffective, though, and I was very much wrapped up in Riley’s story. And the film does an excellent job of showing just what a destabilizing experience puberty is, how it basically means that the kid is built again from the ground up, entirely remade – and yet, not, of course. The way this inner turmoil causes outer turmoil comes across very nicely, too.

Where I would have liked the film to take a little more risk is with regards to Valentina (Lilimar), Riley’s big hockey idol. Riley’s admiration for her clearly reads as queer, but the film never actually goes there. In fact, in the accompanying (albeit older) short Riley’s First Date, her date is a boy. (Of course, she could be bi, but in a heteronormative world, this is not simply assumed but must be pointed out.) Add to that the fact that the emotions in Riley’s head are the only emotions we see that are both male and female and not just the gender of the person whose head they’re in. This could easily be interpreted as Riley being non-binary, but the film doesn’t even seem to notice that.

That Riley is surrounded by girls of color – Grace, Bree and Valentina – is a nice nod towards representation, but given the film’s structure that necessarily focuses on Riley’s inner life and nobody else’s, it does leave a bit of a bitter taste, making the other girls feel like props in the white girl’s story.

But other than that, Inside Out 2 is fun. It is almost educative regarding puberty, it is funny and touching and simply gives us a good time. There have definitely been less satisfying animated movies, and even more definitely less satisfying sequels in recent years, making this one even more of a win.

Summarizing: lovely.