Early on in “Inside Out 2,” as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust sleep within newly minted teenager Riley — Anger is, of course, fighting someone in his dream — a beeping sound begins to emanate from the button.
Then a full-blown siren.
This is not a drill, people, er, emotions!
Yes, Riley, now voiced by Kensington Tallman, enters into that confusing — and highly emotional — time in a young person’s life in this excellent sequel from Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios.
Riley’s still a good kid when “Inside Out 2” begins, which is a source of pride for Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear, voiced, respectively, by returnees Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith and Lewis Black and newcomers Liza Lapira and Tony Hale. She loves her mom and dad (fellow “Inside Out” alums Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) and playing hockey with besties Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), with whom she collaborates on the winning goal in a championship game.
That triumph is followed by the trio being invited to a three-day hockey camp that will be populated by players from the high school level. If they impress the coach (Yvette Nicole Brown), she may offer them spots on the team!
The morning the camp starts, that siren is blaring within Riley. As her emotions try to gently tap the right buttons on the console, Riley unleashes on her well-intended mother before entering into a bout of sadness.
Oh boy.
It is then that Riley’s quintet of emotions realizes they have a newcomer among them: Anxiety (Maya Hawke).
She’s, well, a lot — and she’s not alone, bringing with her Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). (The latter is described as a mix of “boredom, disdain or this feeling of blase” by director Kelsey Mann in the movie’s production notes, and Ennui does her job, lazily, via smartphone from a nearby couch.)
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As if the new emotions aren’t enough for Riley to deal with, she realizes — in a well-executed scene in which emotions inside different friends examine the way each looks at the other — that Bree and Grace are hiding something from her. When they spill the beans that they’ve been assigned to a different high school from hers for the next school year, Riley — driven by the extremely assertive Anxiety — decides to shut them out and try to impress the older girls, especially her idol, the talented Valentina “Val” Ortiz (Lilimar Hernandez, credited as simply Lilimar).
The old guard of emotions, Joy especially, doesn’t like any of this, and those emotions soon find themselves literally bottled up — suppressed emotions! — thanks to Anxiety, who is increasingly out of control as she tries to navigate Riley through the camp.
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Written by Meg LeFauve (“Inside Out,” “Captain Marvel”) and Dave Holstein (“Kidding,” “Weeds”), with the story credited to Mann and LeFauve, “Inside Out 2,” like its predecessor, is chock full of clever concepts for the world within Riley, such as the Stream of Consciousness and, most praise-worthy, the Sar-Chasm. (It’s so, so clever.)
Making his directorial debut, Pixar vet Mann takes over the directing reins from Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Doctor. The latter had a daughter of about Riley’s age while making “Inside Out,” and the former has two teens, so the handoff feels appropriate.
Mann and company have improved upon the formula from the first movie by having more emotions working in concert throughout the adventure, the actions of the newcomers driving Riley’s increasingly questionable choices. Led by Joy, the old gang sets about the important — and dangerous — task of restoring Riley’s Sense of Self. In the process, Joy asks much of the less-than-confident Sadness who finds a kindred spirit in the large but very much not-in-charge Embarrassment, who frequently pulls his hoodie over his eyes when around the others.
Hawke (“Stranger Things”) is terrific as the odd-looking bundle of nervous energy that is Anxiety, while Poehler’s work as Joy is, appropriately, the emotional center of “Inside Out 2.” One of the film’s myriad third-act impactful moments is Joy beginning to wonder if a person simply experiences less joy when he or she gets older.
For as strong as it is from its first few minutes, “Inside Out 2” truly does save the best for last, with everything coming to a highly and believably emotional climax at the camp-concluding scrimmage.
“Inside Out” was a box-office hit and the 2016 winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but, honestly, we were a little underwhelmed, feeling it didn’t quite deliver on its admirably ambitious concept. That is not the case here, with the puberty angle providing very fertile ground for this format.
And now we’d welcome an “Inside Out 3.” After all, what happens when a cute boy enters Riley’s world?
We’re gonna need a few more emotions, to be sure.
‘Inside Out 2’
Where: Theaters.
When: June 14.
Rated: PG for some thematic elements.
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes.
Stars (of four): 3.5.
