Riley (Kensington Tallman) is just entering puberty and the new emotions she develops decide to bottle up her existing ones as they think they can do a better job of guiding her through life. 

Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyliss Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) find themselves sharing Riley’s brain with Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser). 

With Riley going to an Ice Hockey skills camp and also worrying about the need to make new friends at her new high school Anxiety decides she would be better taking the lead on what Riley does. This results in Joy and the original group of emotions taking a journey into the deepest recesses of Riley’s mind as the two groups of emotions fight over how to develop her belief system. 

The result turns into a good assessment of how puberty impacts you and changes you as a person whilst providing life lessons around the fact that you need all of your emotions working in a well rounded manner. As opposed to letting one consume you. 

Honestly though, as with much of Pixar’s recent output I did not find it as emotionally impacting or poignant as the original 2015 film. Certainly there is nothing to match the impact of Bing Bong from the original. That is not to say that it’s not a thoroughly entertaining 96 minutes and one that will be informative to children as well. 

The animation is still top tier and I loved how the characters never seem completely solid. Each of them made up of thousands of floating connected dots. 

It was disappointing to discover Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling would not be returning as Fear and Disgust due to pay disputes. But their replacements worked well. Whilst the new additions to the voice cast were a lot of fun, particularly Adele Exarchopoulos’ Ennui. 

Perhaps the fault is with me in constantly comparing Pixar sequels to their exemplary earlier films. Inside Out 2 has little to fault it except that it is not the original and brilliant film its predecessor was.

Good family entertainment.