Gotta hand it to Pixar. For being able, despite being owned by Disney, to put out a movie – a sequel, no less – with this kind of solid originality. 2015’s Inside Out, if you remember, pulled off the neat trick of anthropomorphizing the emotions in the mind of a girl on the brink of adolescence during a traumatic family move from the Midwest to San Francisco. 

Back then I said, “This is an emotionally intelligent, surreal, cathartic and heavily metaphoric take on the fleeting nature of childhood… It’s a movie for the mind, the eye and the heart.” All that still goes, in spades. But what new crisis would young Riley face now that throws all her ways of thinking out the window? Right. Puberty. 

Her familiar emotions like Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust have to make way for and even do battle with newcomers Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui (voices brilliantly supplied by Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Lewis Black, Ayo Edebiri, and many others).

Of the first film I also said, “It had this hardened film critic blubbering like a baby.” Happened again. (BTW, a  re-watch of that film would not go unrewarded.) 

Note to macho men out there that think you’re too cool for an inspired observational comedy about what a little girl is thinking: You’re not. (96 min)