Inside Out 2

 We didn't really need a sequel to Inside Out. Its final five minutes, which left the protagonist's head and its anthropomorphized emotions to give us a glimpse of what was going in the heads of a bunch of other people (and a cat) was worth a whole franchise.

 It's a near perfect scene, riotously funny and fiercely inventive in a way no follow-up could ever hope to be. And that's coming at the tail end of one of Pixar's best films. Talk about salting the earth.

 Inside Out 2 is not as good as the first one - how could it? But it's a clever, often hilarious, often moving film in its own right.

 The film once again tracks the five emotions that 'drive' young Riley (Kensington Tallman) just as she hits thirteen years. The emotions are Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Liza Lapira, replacing Mindy Kaling), Fear (Tony Hale, replacing Bill Hader) and Anger (Lewis Black). All the lovely representations of Riley's psychological makeup remain from the first movie - the 'islands' that comprise her identity, the little memory-holding, emotion-tinged orbs and the way they're sent to permanent storage - with the wrinkle that Joy and co. have decided to start sending all the memories that make Riley uncomfortable to a dump somewhere at the back of the mind. Sounds healthy.

 There's a couple of lovely additions, too. The emotions have discovered that certain memories can be set aside to together organically build a sort of woven effigy of Riley's sense of self. It's a great concept that the script (by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein) uses pretty effectively later on.

 The emotions figure it's all smooth sailing - until puberty hits. Then the console they use to influence Riley is changed for one that's seriously out of whack - any adjustments they make go way overboard. Soon afterwards, new emotions come onboard.

 The new emotions are Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Ennui (Adéle Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser, who only gets one really lame gag). All of them are gorgeously realized and like the original emotions they're vividly expressive, beautifully voice acted, and just funny to watch as they go about doing their stuff.

 While all this goes on within, without doesn't lack for problems: Riley is faced with the prospect of losing her best friends when they're assigned to a different high school, and then has some complications at a hockey camp where she feels she needs to choose between them and her passion (which comes with an impossibly cool new social group).

 This causes a mutiny in Riley's mind, as the new emotions - led by Anxiety - 'bottle up' the others (literally!); like in the previous movie, the emotions - this time all of the old ones - need to trek through Riley's psyche to make things all right again. And while that's going on, Riley, driven by anxiety, makes all sorts of terrible choices; The new incumbents have decided to ditch Riley's identity, using the same mechanism that Joy and co. used to jettison unwanted memories.

 It all tracks. Following in the footsteps of first part's helmer Pete Docter, director Kelsey Mann and his crew have crafted a story that works beautifully as entertainment and achieves that rarest of things in films nominally aimed at children: emotional honesty. And Pixar have a knack for coming up with elegant, resonant, concrete and easily understandable metaphors for abstract processes (see also: Soul's 'in the zone' zone), which is on full display here.

 After a slightly shaky start, which was a little too hectic and energetic for my taste - too standard modern animation - the film settles down and gives its ideas a little time to breathe. And there are some killer gags too*.

 Compare this to the trailer for the newest Despicable Me, which is all naked pandering, manipulation and manic mugging at the cameras.

 Technically, of course it's a marvel, one that manages stylization with a photorrealistic level of detail. Nothing stands out as being particularly visually impressive, but as a whole it looks great. The soundtrack this time around is by Andrea Datzman. It's fine, but it has the unenviable task of living up to Michael Giacchino's incredible main theme from the first movie; She never stood a chance, as it makes a comeback, expertly deployed, in a particularly emotional scene. Sorry lady!

 It's not a perfect - there's a more than a few groaners, a few things are a little too played out. Not that it matters much; the trailers for all those shitty kid's movies just before the film actually help put into focus just how good Pixar is at this sort of thing.

 I made my dad watch the transformers movie when I was a kid, something that still makes me laugh when I think about it; For context, my dad made me watch Bicycle Thieves at... probably at around the same time. I really screwed him over with that exchange rate.

 It's not as if I've ever needed an excuse to watch animated stuff since, but having a kid has thrown into relief just how much care and craft is expended on the story department for stuff nominally aimed at children these days. I think we'll be fine if Pixar ever shut down their doors; For every Despicable Me 4 there are a bunch of Nimonas or Puss In Boots - that's our baseline level of quality, and there are enough people out there these days that aim to provide kids with a little more than empty calories.

 We have it so much better than our parents.

*: There's an extended riff on repressed emotions that got a huge reaction from the audience I was with - it gives a Cloud Strife-alike Shamus Aran's funniest power-up, and a separate spoof has one of the best fourth-wall breaking conceits I've seen in ages. This is what happens when you let the nerds run the show, and I love it.