Inside Out 2

Kelsey Mann’s first feature does not rebuild the machinery of the original. There a lost core memory had to be carried home; here Riley’s sense of self collapses and must be reassembled out of beliefs that contradict each other. The climax is a repair job, not a rescue. Anxiety is not written as a standard villain. Mann says he shaped her from All About Eve, a colleague who takes over deliberately rather than by accident. Among the candidates was a Shame character, built as the arch villain and then cut: it played too heavily, and the consulting psychologist Dacher Keltner judged that anxiety is in everyone while shame is not. The hockey camp arrived late too. The story first ran on a talent show and turned towards hockey after a few test screenings. Fear and Disgust sound different because of money. Reported figures put Amy Poehler’s offer at five million dollars and the rest of the cast at one hundred thousand, which Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling refused. A good fit if neither the recast voices nor the changed structure will bother you on a back to back rewatch. Not for anyone waiting for Anxiety to be beaten and expelled, because the film leaves her in place as a colleague who was right about some things.