‘Inside Out 2’ Is Brilliant: The Win Pixar Desperately Needs

There’s a lot riding on Inside Out 2, Pixar’s 28th feature film, which hits theaters June 14. As the sequel to a beloved, Oscar-winning movie, it arrives with high expectations from fans. But it also means a lot to Pixar’s bottom line. The venerated animation studio has suffered numerous setbacks in recent years, due to the back-to-back disappointments of Lightyear (a commercial and critical flop) and Elemental, which posted the studio’s worst-ever opening weekend, before bouncing back by the end of its theatrical run. A string of pandemic-era Disney+ exclusives performed well critically, but they left the impression that skipping the theater to watch the new Pixar movie at home is a solid option. This led to layoffs and a stated commitment to reorient the studio’s production strategy away from personal, original pictures and toward sequels and spinoffs of surefire hits—just like this one.

Animation fans and cinephiles balked at the report that Pixar was going hard on franchises and established stories, which is a reasonable reaction. The studio is beloved for its original storytelling, and cashing in on popularity is what gave us the abysmal Cars trilogy. Thankfully, the charming Inside Out 2 suggests that returning to the well of its tried-and-true may not be such a bad thing after all. It’s not just a fitting sequel; it’s one of the studio’s best films in years.

Picking up two years after the 2015 original, Inside Out 2 reintroduces us to Riley (Kensington Tallman), whose mind is home to a bundle of emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear, and Disgust (Tony Hale and Liza Lapira, replacing BIll Hader and Mindy Kaling). The group steers Riley’s development, determining her emotional reactions, saving her best, most important memories, and binning the bad ones. (Just as her feelings are sentient, so too are her memories, personality traits, and beliefs.) This is all in service of Riley developing a sense of self, which Joy proudly notes is well-established. Riley is a good person, and she knows it.

Read more at The Daily Beast.