Shadows on the Wall | Inside Out 2

Inside Out 2

dir Kelsey Mann
prd Mark Nielsen
scr Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein
voices Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Phyllis Smith, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Liza Lapira, Ayo Edebiri, Adele Exarchopoulos, Paul Walter Hauser, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan
release US/UK 14.Jun.24
24/US Pixar 1h36

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Packed with great ideas, this sequel to the 2015 hit follows the storm of feelings as Riley moves into puberty. Surprisingly, this chaos creates a restlessly action-oriented film that's not as emotionally engaging. It's busy and fun, but only occasionally funny or charming. Moving into the director's chair, storyboard artist Kelsey Mann nicely juggles various plot threads and some terrific animation, but it feels oddly soulless this time.

At 13, Riley (Tallman) is a top student and ace hockey player, but as she heads to a summer sports camp a whole range of new emotions arrive. From inside, Joy (Poehler) is horrified by this, joining her emotional cohorts Sadness (Smith), Anger (Black), Fear (Hale) and Disgust (Lapira) to fight new arrival Anxiety (Hawke), who is accompanied by Envy (Edebiri), Embarrassment (Hauser) and Ennui (Exarchopoulos). But Anxiety seizes power, banishing the old feelings and rewriting Riley's sense of self. So Joy leads them on a quest to rescue Riley's sense of who she is.

Much of the story takes place in the real world this time, as Riley faces big changes in relationships with her friends as she prioritises impressing the older kids. These scenes are clear enough without the frantic action mayhem inside her head as this broader, more complex range of emotions jostle for control. None of this is particularly original, as Riley's experience is fairly typical. But the more nutty touches keep us smiling.

It's unusual for a Pixar movie to neglect finding an inventive way into a thorny topic. Scenes with Riley and her parents (Lane and MacLachlan) offer some promise in this sense, but are swiftly left behind as she heads to camp. And while the animation renders the emotions in vividly coloured fuzzballs, and Riley's inner world as a rollicking funland packed with offbeat figures, the humans have a somewhat generic plasticity that keeps them from sparking the imagination.

Even if it never quite seems to go far enough, the script touches on several terrific themes, cleverly playing with the way feelings become jumbled as the hormones kick in. Although parents don't need to worry that things get even remotely spicy in that sense: this is a resolutely safe movie. And frankly, it's always much more involving when Pixar pushes us into places we don't expect to go, and perhaps don't want to.

themes, some violence 14.Jun.24

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