Origin and release year: United States (2024 – Inside Out 2)

Starring: Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Amy Poehler, Paul Walter Hauser, Lilimar, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, June Squibb, Ron Funches, John Ratzenberger, Yvette Nicole Brown, Diane Lane, Kensington Tallman, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Kyle MacLachlan

Director: Kelsey Mann

Screenwriter: Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein, Kelsey Mann

Synopsis: Follows Riley, in her teenage years, encountering new emotions. (IMDb)

Before going to see this movie, a lot of people said that you need to have seen the first one (which this writer did but it was so long ago that I don’t remember much of it). However, even without much memory of the first film, you can catch on very easily to the story and it doesn’t really affect your viewing experience. All in all, you can watch the sequel with little to no knowledge of the first film. Naturally though, it is a lot more fun to watch if you’ve seen the first film.

With that said, the film was quite fun and had a wholesome message as these Disney Pixar films tend to have.

If the first Inside Out was about exploring basic emotions and learning to embrace them, the second one was about complex emotions and how they contribute to your self-identity or what you think it should be.

Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke) played a vital role in the film as she showed the coming-of-age process we all go through where suddenly nothing seems good enough. This part largely portrayed the struggle that never really goes away in adulthood of being true to yourself and what you enjoy vs the expectations of (or compared to) others and the misconceptions you create for yourself as a result.

Whilst the adventure that the initial emotions went on to re-discover Riley’s (voiced by Kensington Tallman) value system and self-identity played largely into the entertainment value of the narrative, the self-battle with anxiety (pun intended) and the conflict between the two groups of emotions as a metaphor for change (with puberty as a catalyst) truly made the film and its message all the more impactful.

In the end, the key message was that happiness or specifically Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) is the most essential emotion, which is a testament to what we all strive to achieve anyways. Inside Out 2 also made it clear that our idea of what makes us happy might not be the real happiness that we need.

One last thing that stood out about the film is that it felt childish at times. Naturally, it’s an animation so these are typically made for children but we all know there are some films that can be enjoyed universally by audiences of all ages (like Soul or The Incredibles 2, for example) – the first Inside Out felt like that. This one? Felt very much intentionally made for children. Upon further inspection of the credits, it does indeed seem like the creators targeted the film more towards children. We’re not saying it’s an issue, but just be aware.

Overall, it was a great film and definitely just as good as the first film.

What did you think of Inside Out 2? Let us know in the comments!