Inside Out 2 review – earnest but unambitious

Pixar have had more miss­es than hits late­ly, with Ele­men­tal and Lightyear receiv­ing luke­warm reviews and Toy Sto­ry 4 (released in 2019) their last com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal smash hit. Their recent string of under­per­form­ing orig­i­nal sto­ries might be what has con­vinced head hon­cho Pete Doc­ter that they need to return to tried-and-test­ed char­ac­ters. Whether it’s Woody and Buzz, Nemo and Dory, the Incred­i­bles’ Parr fam­i­ly or Joy and Sad­ness, it seems Pixar won’t rest until they’ve sequeli­fied all their IP (though mer­ci­ful­ly, Doc­ter has sworn off live-action remakes, which the House of Mouse are churn­ing out at a rate of knots).

2015’s Inside Out is the lat­est film to be revis­it­ed, with the colour­ful coterie of emo­tions (Joy, Sad­ness, Fear, Anger and Dis­gust) that live inside 13-year-old Riley’s mind excit­ed about her final sum­mer before high school. As she arrives at a three-day hock­ey camp with her best friends, Riley is hit with the bomb­shell that they won’t be going to the same high school as her, and so the tween decides she has to choose between throw­ing all her ener­gy into mak­ing the sports team or hang­ing with her pals one last time. A sim­i­lar change is tak­ing place at Emo­tion HQ, as a con­struc­tion crew uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly announces the arrival of four new employ­ees. Anx­i­ety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edibiri), Ennui (Adéle Exar­chopou­los) and the near-silent Embar­rass­ment are ​“more com­plex” than the quin­tet who have resided in Riley’s brain so far, and they have some strong new ideas about how Riley should nav­i­gate this turn­ing point in her life.

Rough­ly fol­low­ing the struc­ture of Inside Out, the sequel sees Joy and co set out on anoth­er fetch quest – this time they’re tasked with retriev­ing Riley’s ​“sense of self” after an over-zeal­ous Anx­i­ety blasts it to the back of the mind and ban­ish­es Joy and the old emo­tions from head­quar­ters. The action is split between the old emo­tions, new emo­tions, and Riley’s antics in the real world, which does give the film a tricky bal­ance to strike, with a large num­ber of char­ac­ters fight­ing for atten­tion. Anx­i­ety is the most fleshed-out of the new addi­tions, but Exar­chopou­los (a sea­soned voice actress in her native France) steals the show as the ter­mi­nal­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed Ennui, while June Squibb has a fun cameo as ​‘Nos­tal­gia’ (“You’re not due to arrive for at least anoth­er 10 years, after high school grad­u­a­tion and a best friend’s wed­ding!” Anx­i­ety tells her as she ush­ers her back into the base­ment). Even so, there’s not real­ly enough time to tru­ly get to know the new char­ac­ters with the excep­tion of Anx­i­ety, who is the de-fac­to antag­o­nist proven to be a good guy by the very end.

Speak­ing of new addi­tions, two orig­i­nal cast mem­bers, Mindy Kaling and Bill Had­er, who voiced Dis­gust and Fear, have been replaced by Liza Lapi­ra and Tony Hale, alleged­ly due to a pay dis­pute. It’s a shame, but Lapi­ra and Hale are as sparky as the rest of the cast (even as a Had­er super­fan, I must con­cede Hale fits right in, even if he’s essen­tial­ly reusing his Forky voice).

The prob­lem with sequels is that they can rarely match up to the orig­i­nal – Toy Sto­ry is per­haps the only Pixar prop­er­ty where the sec­ond and third instal­ments man­aged it – and that’s inevitably true for Inside Out 2. Although there are some fun expan­sions to the estab­lished world (a scene involv­ing a video game char­ac­ter and a preschool tele­vi­sion show utilis­es dif­fer­ent ani­ma­tion styles to great effect) the film essen­tial­ly colours with­in the lines, tak­ing few risks and stick­ing to a tried-and-test­ed for­mu­la. It’s a timid offer­ing from a once-bold stu­dio, and although it’s bet­ter con­ceived and more enjoy­able than many of the studio’s recent projects, retain­ing the charm­ing design style and thought­ful touch­es which have made Pixar one of the world’s most beloved ani­ma­tion stu­dios, it – iron­i­cal­ly enough – lacks the emo­tion­al grav­i­tas of its predecessor.