PEACE (AND PIECES) OF MIND 'INSIDE OUT 2'

Sequels have been a touchy subject when it comes to Pixar, but it’s hard to deny the natural premise of “Inside Out 2.”

- 

It’s been nine years since “Inside Out,” yet in the span between that film and its new sequel, Riley, the young girl with a head full of emotions, has gone from 11 years old to 13. She’s just grown up a little.

Or maybe a lot. In the middle of the night, the old gang of Joy ( Amy Poehler ), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira) and Anger (Lewis Black) are roused from their beds by a soft beep, like a fire alarm in need of a new battery, but soon it’s sounding an all-out emergency. On their console a red light blinks. “What’s that?” one says. “Puberty,” the button reads. Soon, construction workers are swarming the control room for “demo day,” with wrecking balls making room for “the others.”

In come a new gaggle of emotions said to be more sophisticated: Anxiety ( Maya Hawke ), Envy ( Ayo Edebiri ), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). The next morning, Riley wakes up to find herself unusually stinky. Life, as they say, comes at you pretty fast. “Inside Out 2” turns out to be not just a modest, inch-things-along sequel but a follow-up of cataclysmic proportions.

Tempting as it is to take any revisiting of “Inside Out” — a high water mark for not just Pixar but ‘10s American movies — as sacrilegious, its sequel is deftly sensitive to one of the most awkward chapters of life. The giddy sense of imagination is a little less boundless this time. One could certainly look at “Inside Out 2” like a parent eyeing a teenager and thinking the younger version was cuter and less whiny. But the filmmakers of “Inside Out 2” have managed again to filter complex psychological developments into a bright, entertaining head trip that in its finest moments packs an emotional wallop.