Inside Out 2 movie review: The Inside Out sequel is a winner

These new ones include Anxiety (Hawke), Envy (Edebiri), Embarrassment (Hauser) and Ennui (a very French Exarchopoulos). Anyone with a kid anywhere in the teen spectrum will know it when it sees it, as will any kid living the age.

Can one hold on to one’s ’Sense of Self’ amidst all this? The feelings at the core of who you are?

In dealing with a much more complex spectrum, Inside Out 2 is superior to the first film, released in 2015. There is conflict here, and a sense of loss and new beginnings. There is a growing-up, and a fitting-in. Love and hurt; selfishness and kindness. A ‘friendship island’ that completely outsizes the ‘family island’ in Riley’s mind is a good example of this change.

Is there maybe too much of everything? Pixar Studios, fighting a mini-slump, throws everything and then some into Inside Out 2. So apart from Riley and her friends in real life, who are going through their owns ups and downs and set of tensions, the world of feelings inside her is large, confusing and full of psychedelic colours.

There is barely a joke involving the mind that Inside Out 2 doesn’t crack — ‘Stream of Consciousness’, ‘Back of the Mind’, ‘Deep Dark Secrets’, ‘Brainstorm’, ‘Bottled Up Emotions, ‘Sar-chasm’, all make a literal appearance to drive the point in. The effect is pleasing, but the effort obvious.

The voice cast is excellent, with a special nod to Sadness and Embarrassment, with the latter’s use of hoodie as a protective shield maybe the cleverest use of a costume to signal a personality.

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There are no bad people, and there are no bad feelings in Inside Out 2, in a relief from big, summer blockbusters, and their desperate need for the above.

In telling simply how there are all these emotions within us, and that it is up to us to make of it what we will, Inside Out 2 is a winner.

Inside Out 2 movie director: Kelsey Mann
Inside Out 2 voice cast: Kensington Tallman, Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Adele Exorchopoulos, Paul Walter Houser
Inside Out 2 movie rating: 4 stars