Inside Out 2 (2024) review

A little bit of time has passed since the conclusion of the 2015 box office hit by Pixar, and Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) - whose "mind" is held together by various feelings such as Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), etc. - finally becomes a teenager, is invited to a three-day ice hockey camp ... and then new "emotions" emerge, including Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), that dismiss Joy and the gang and take control of her brain.  While I'll admit it doesn't have the same feeling of "freshness" as the original feature and the premise is an oversimplified interpretation of "growing up" (which she apparently does overnight), not many movies made nowadays for a youthful audience possess a similar level of empathy or compassion: it remembers what it's like not to know what the "cool crowd" think is good music, how difficult it is to shed what are interpreted as "childish interests" and how bad it is to behave rudely to old friends who don't deserve it.  This seems to consciously dodge the "Sexuality Question" - it reminds me of what musician Lindsey Jordan, who goes by the moniker Snail Mail, said to Pitchfork (for an "Over/Under" video) regarding her own years playing hockey ("we all tried to force ourselves to talk about boys") - but let's be fair: (a.) high school freshmen, at least these days, don't have a "fixed preference" yet (everything's "fluid," remember?) and (b.) when your "darkest secret" is that you urinated in a pool ... you have a lot more livin' to do.