INSIDE OUT 2

It may have been 9 years since the original Inside Out released, but in-universe only 2 have passed. Riley (Kensington Tallman) now thirteen is heading towards puberty, an event which will see changes not just for her, but for the five personified emotions that live within her, as some new emotions threaten to take over.

These interlopers are Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and their leader Anxiety (Maya Hawke).

When Anxiety banishes Rileys pre-existing base emotions - literally bottling them up - her life, and emotional state, enter a new phase of turmoil.

The more I think about Inside Out 2 the more I like it. I came out of the cinema thinking it was good, but not as good as the first. But as I’ve sat with it it has grown on me. There are a lot of cool, clever ideas in here, and the filmmakers should be complimented for how they manage to portray some quite complex emotions and concepts organically in the world of the film.

The handling of repressed memories and emotions is really well done, seeing Joy (Amy Poehler) literally firing them to a dark place at the back of Rileys mind. 

The sense of self, that builds itself upon the memories that her emotions decide to keep hold of, manifesting in Rileys mind, before being callously ripped away by the new ones that puberty brings.

And, in particular, Anxiety who manically tries to protect Riley by over analysing everything that she does, predicting all of the ways that any decision could go wrong and backfire.

It is all incredibly clever, and each idea, each difficult emotion, is portrayed in a way that will be easy for young people, those going through, or about to go through, puberty themselves, to understand and relate to.

The way that, despite Anxiety technically being the villain of the film, they go to lengths to not vilify her. You understand what she’s doing. You appreciate that she sees her actions as the best way to protect Riley. And by not vilifying the character it promotes the message that we should not vilify the emotion.

It is a film that I can genuinely see helping young people through a difficult time.

It is also fun to see all of the base emotions interact more with each other. As my friend Paige pointed out, in the first Inside Out the majority of our time is spent with Joy and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who venture out of the control room.

Here, they are joined by Anger (Lewis Black) and the recast Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Fear (Tony Hale), creating a new dynamic for the group.

And as you can probably tell there are a lot of characters to juggle here, and a lot of different voices. But part of the beauty of Inside Out 2’s concept is that it doesn’t need to go through the rigmarole of setting up who they are. 

We know who they are.

Because we have all experienced every single one of them. We have all experienced anxiety or embarrassment or fear, so by simply just telling us that that is their name, they don’t need to do anything else to set up their motivations or their character. 

This allows them to have a cast list that otherwise might feel overstuffed, and still make it work

The one narrative issue I have with them, and this is something a friend of mine picked up on when the trailer was first released, is the lack of these extra emotions in the minds of the adult characters. 

Other than a brief appearance by anxiety in the minds of Rileys parents, we only ever see the 5 core emotions that were set up in the original. 

Now, in terms of the real world, I understand why this was the case, but it would have been nice for them to come up with an in-universe reason too, as as it is, it comes across as a bit of a plot hole, suggesting that emotions like anxiety and embarrassment aren’t a major part of adult lives (which, lets be honest, we all know is not the case).

That is a minor quibble though, and one which will likely mean nothing to the films target audience, but as an adult in the screening it did stick out.

I would also say that, based on the hype around the film, I was expecting Inside Out 2 to be… emotionally devastating. In the same way the original was. And it wasn’t. It didn’t make me cry. And in the moment I think I was a little disappointed by this.

What it did do, however, was make me feel incredibly anxious. And I think that’s the point.

Sadness was such a huge part of the first film, but here anxiety takes that more central role, and fittingly that is the button it’s going to push in its audience. It very deliberately attacks a different emotion this time round and, again, the more I sat with it the more this made sense to me.

What I initially felt was a negative is actually, perhaps, one of the films strengths and in fact it was the hype around the film, that it will make you cry, that actively harms it.

As I’ve said, the more I think about Inside Out 2 the more I like it. The way it packages complex ideas and emotions for a young audience is extremely well done, and something I’m not sure I’ve seen in cinema before. 

It may be a sequel that - even more so than the original - perseveres for years to come.