Directed by Kelsey Mann
Screenplay by Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein
Story by Kelsey Mann, Meg LeFauve
Produced by Mark Nielsen
Starring
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
Cinematography Adam Habib, Jonathan Pytko
Edited by Maurissa Horwitz
Music by Andrea Datzman
Production company Pixar Animation Studios
Distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Running time 96 minutes
Country United States
Poor Riley. The first time we got to dissect her mind, back in 2015, she was 11 years old, and was trying to cope with her family pulling up stakes and moving to San Francisco. Like most 11 year olds, she wasn’t particularly complicated: her primary emotions, brilliantly personified in the first movie, were Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Moving to the very distinctly different culture of California at that age is a challenge, as I can personally attest. Californians take some getting used to, and in the main, few of them see any reason to get used to you.
Now a decade has passed, and thanks to the magic of animation, Riley is now 13 years old. (Well, Lisa Simpson was 8 back in 1988, and she still is 8 now). Early in the movie, the puberty alarm goes off, and suddenly life is a whole lot more complicated.
For starters, Riley now has a “Sense of Self”–children have at most a tenuous grasp of Self, but when adolescence strikes, it suddenly becomes central, which is highly disconcerting. Riley believes she is a Good Person, but that is about to face challenges.
In Riley’s case, Joy has decided it is necessary to keep only good memories, and send all the bad memories to the hindbrain. This leaves Joy lacking the requisite depth to deal with the newly-bloomed self-awareness and the new emotions that take over when puberty hits: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui.
She and two of her friends play on the school’s junior grade ice hockey team, and they receive an invitation to try out for the senior team, which are 14 year olds and up. Riley quickly finds herself torn between love and loyalty to her friends, and desire to impress and join the elder team.
If Inside Out was a great portrayal of the hidden mind of a child, Inside Out 2 surpasses it with the far more intricate and complex machinations of the mind of a female adolescent. It’s easy for an adult to dismiss the concerns of childhood as shallow and even trivial, but the tsunami of emotion and confusion that comes with early teenage years is something even adults shy away from.
Thus the sequel not only brings the same delirious wit and personifications to the fore, but paints a much more complex and engaging picture. It’s probably a good movie for parents whose kids are starting to change: it won’t get you to understand them, but you’ll have a clearer and more sympathetic view as to what is going on with them.