Inside Out 2

Ah, the predicament of the unworthy sequel to a truly great film. In his directorial debut, Pixar Senior Creative Team member Kelsey Mann and his co-writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein craft a perfectly serviceable follow-up to the Pete Docter-helmed Inside Out. That unexpected picture took the hardly original premise that the human brain is an industrial system manned by a staff of anthropomorphized emotions and created something truly magical from it. One of the smartest choices made for the original film was the brilliance in boiling down the number of emotions/characters to just five. I have no idea how much work, research, trial and error, and story drafts occurred during the Inside Out development process to figure out which five emotions would be represented as the primary forces that drive all human beings, but the final credited screenwriters, Docter, LeFauve, Josh Cooley, and Ronnie del Carmen, built an incredibly imaginative world, rock solid narrative, and sharp, moving themes from that initial smart decision. Literally, every choice made after that initial limitation feels like the right one, which easily renders Inside Out one of the top two or three movies in the Pixar canon.

In creating a sequel, I can't really fault Mann and Company for adding new emotion characters into the mix. This is really the only logical choice that could make a follow-up film feel different from the first movie rather than just a sub-par rehash. But the addition of Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) feels like a betrayal of what made the original movie so smart. It spoils the foundational purity of limiting the emotions that drive every human to just five, which elevated the first film from a gimmick premise to a sublime allegory. As funny as it is to have Ennui as a character voiced by the French star of Blue is the Warmest Color, as well as an amusing cameo by June Squibb as Nostalgia, it reduces the picture's astute central premise and rich characters to a series of cleverly and silly jokes.

Also gone from this sequel are two of the original voice actors—Bill Hader as Fear and Mindy Kaling as Disgust—as well as the surprisingly patient and agile pacing that made the first Inside Out such a refreshing change of pace from typical contemporary animated family fare. This sequel rushes along at the usual relentless speed that 98 percent of all animated movies these days seem to. That rapid stride is perhaps to be expected since the film deals with its human character, Riley's early teenage years rather than her childhood. Decisions, stakes, and emotions all seem heightened with the onset of puberty, so the choice to speed things up is perfectly logical. Similarly, having the story revolve around the Anxiety emotion taking over control of Riley's mental console from the previous dominant emotion, Joy (Amy Poehler), is also not a bad choice for this sequel. It feels like the most sensible and correct narrative option if a sequel has to be made. But Inside Out 2 showcases the folly of making an unnecessary follow-up to a truly special film. As is so often true in cases like this, when looking at artistic motivations rather than commercial ones, the best choice is not to make any sequel at all.