As a tepid fan (at best) of the 2015 original film, I admittedly didn’t rush into the sequel with bells on, but I didn’t expect to come out of it abjectly bummed out at Pixar’s latest effort. The premise is that young Riley is now hitting puberty, so her core emotions from the first film (Joy, Disgust, Sadness, etc.) are now joined by more complex ones such as Embarrassment, Ennui, and Anxiety. It makes sense, sure, but the way that Anxiety winds up as the film’s ‘bad guy’ (‘er, ‘girl’—Maya Hawke does the voice honors) completely undercuts the first film’s message about how every emotion is important and helps shape people into the well-rounded folks they are. Instead, Anxiety is portrayed as an uncontrollable trainwreck that nearly destroys poor young Riley before the core emotions can swoop in and fix everything by pushing it out of the way. I kept waiting for the film to right itself and share an important message about how to live and cope with anxiety successfully, but it never happened. Massive fail and helluva lost opportunity.
1.5/5 stars