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Film REVIEW: Inside Out 2 (2024) - ★★★★★

Updated: Jul 11



Where’s your head at? Before you brave the teenage brain with Pixar’s Inside Out 2, check out our movie guide.


From plot, voice cast and trailer to the Inside Out 2 new emotions – including Maya Hawke’s Anxiety! – here’s everything you need to know.



Director: Kelsey Mann


Writer: Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein


Stars: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Adele Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan .


Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy

Themes: Teenager, Anxiety, Sequel


A sequel that features Riley entering puberty and experiencing brand new, more complex emotions as a result. As Riley tries to adapt to her teenage years, her old emotions try to adapt to the possibility of being replaced.

The sequel to Inside Out (2015)

The film received positive reviews from critics.


In Cinemas Now



MIX UP REVIEWS:


Mason (Age 5) - ★★★★★

"Good movie, Anger is the best character! Forty-nine hundred out of 5!"


Stewart - ★★★★★

"Excellent sequel, as Riley's headspace has a whole new bunch of fun emotions (characters) taking over. Maya Hawke's Anxiety has to be one of the best characters ever in Pixar, both in design, vocal performance and it's journey.

Its so fun to think that this epic storyline takes place in just a relatively normal weekend in Riley's head - also shout out to Riley as well, another great character in the Pixar world.

Animation, music, story, the laughs - it's all there. Solid Pixar movie! Maybe a little highbrow for the very young but there's enough going on there to keep everyone entertained. Parents of pre-teens should definitely be checking it out as homework / preparation for the journey to come."


Amelia-Rose (Age 9) - ★★★★★

"I would give this movie 5 stars!

I loved this film, the new emotions are so cool, lots of parts of the film were funny and made me laugh alot.

I really enjoyed the first film but this one was my favourite."


Sadie C (Age 12) - ★★★★1/2




Have you seen it yet?



 




Inside Out 2 buzz - Why is everybody talking about the new Pixar movie?


The movies have taken us to some pretty terrifying places over the years. But trust us, tiptoeing through the Haunted Mansion is nowhere near as scary as entering the teenage brain.


Back in 2015, Pixar’s concept of turning childhood emotions into characters was smart, funny and profound, with critics describing the original Inside Out as “a new pop-culture touchstone”. Now this painfully relatable sequel introduces a whole new lineup of feelings – from Anxiety to Embarrassment – pulling the levers inside our hero Riley’s adolescent skull.


“At the end of the first movie, you saw all these beautiful swirls of memory, where you get Joy and Sadness in the same memory, or Anger and Disgust,” director Kelsey Mann (Megas XLR, Party Central) told Empire Magazine. “I wanted to open this movie with them all in sync with one another and feeling they’re a great team. Until puberty hits…”


 

Inside Out 2 plot - What happens in the new Inside Out movie?



Remember becoming a teenager? Horrible, wasn’t it? Sure, there was a tiny fizz of excitement. But mostly, you found yourself fending off a whole new bunch of unwelcome puberty-era emotions. Anxiety. Envy. Embarrassment. Ennui (that’s just a clever word for boredom).


That’s where 13-year-old Riley finds herself at the start of Inside Out 2. As she blows out the candles on her first ‘teen’ birthday cake, something feels off. And it only gets worse as she navigates high school’s choppy social waters. Inside Riley’s cerebral cortex, meanwhile, things are going haywire, as the newcomers hijack the control desk and bottle up her childhood emotions (in an actual bottle).


“We're going to have what it feels like to be a teenager, the new emotions that live inside a young person's brain,” Amy Poehler (Mean Girls), who voices Joy, told People. “In many ways, it was really exciting. We knew exactly where we were. We go to the teen brain and we see the madness that lives inside there.”


 

Cast of Inside Out 2 - Who's in the voice cast of the new Inside Out movie?



Most of the 2015 voice cast return to play the original childhood emotions in Inside Out 2. Parks And Recreation’s Amy Poehler is Joy, a glass-half-full pixie with hair like a pilot light. The Office’s Phyllis Smith reprises her role as Sadness, while The Daily Show’s resident ranter Lewis Black takes charge as Anger during Riley’s ice hockey matches.t.


Tony Hale (Toy Story 4, Stranger Than Fiction) replaces Bill Hader as Fear, while Liza Lapira (Crazy Stupid Love, Fast & Furious, 21) takes over from Mindy Kaling as Disgust. As for the obligatory surprise celebrity cameos, keep your ears open for everyone from Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea (Back to the Future Part II / III) to Frank ‘Yoda’ Oz.

 

Inside Out 2 new emotions - Who's got in Riley's head this time around?



There are four new teenage emotions jostling for space in Riley’s brain and you’ll relate to them all. Ayo Edebiri (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) plays Envy, a grass-is-greener type forever pining after what she doesn’t have. Paul Walter Hauser (Cruella, Orion and the Dark) voices Embarrassment: a giant lump of awkwardness in a hoodie, permanently squirming and cringing.


Voiced by the Cannes Film Festival’s youngest-ever Palme D’Or winner, French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos (The Roundup, Trouble at Tempetill) plays Ennui: a world-weary Gallic emotion, usually found crashed out with a smartphone and an eye-roll.


 

Inside Out 2 Anxiety - What do we know about the new Maya Hawke-voiced character?



Based on the Inside Out 2 trailer, the new MVP is undoubtedly Anxiety, voiced by Stranger Things star Maya Hawke (Asteroid City) . She’s believed by some fans to be the movie’s villain – but we’re betting Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein and Jon Zack’s screenplay is more nuanced than that.


“I’m especially excited about Anxiety,” says director Kelsey Mann. “There are a lot of different types of anxiety, but we’re really leaning into social anxiety, wanting to fit in and be part of a group. Wondering, ‘Am I good enough?’”


Mann added a little more about the character’s motivations in another interview: “Anxiety might be new to the crew, but she’s not the type to take a back seat. That makes a lot of sense if you think about it in terms of what goes on inside all our minds.”

 

Inside Out 2 age rating - Who can see the new Inside Out movie?



Inside Out 2 might deal with young-adult emotions, but everybody will be able to enjoy this family animation. Even if they’ve never navigated braces and boyfriends, very young kids will love the characters for their wackiness, and not worry too much about the subtext. But teenagers – and the parents who have to deal with them – will definitely see a little of their own headspace in this movie.

 

Inside Out 2 trivia - What's a fun fact about the new Inside Out movie?



If you want to gauge the anticipation for Inside Out 2, how about the fact that the first trailer set a Disney record of 157 million views in 24 hours, even leaving Frozen II in the dust (116 million views). The biggest reaction was for Anxiety, with one social media poster describing the new character as “a visual representation of the thing that’s been bothering the inside my head for years!”


 

Inside Out 2 is released three decades since Toy Story, you must know by now that Pixar movies and popcorn are the perfect match. So round up your kids and give Pleasure and Excitement the controls for the afternoon and go see the iconic animation studio’s funniest and wisest movie yet. Inside Out 2 is a no-brainer.


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