ANAHEIM, Calif. — Nine years after audiences ventured inside the mind of a young girl, Riley and her emotions are back in “Inside Out 2.”
The Pixar animated film begins with the main character’s 13th birthday and the onset of puberty. That introduces several new, sophisticated emotions - Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui.
"Pixar does not patronize its audience or its characters,” said star Amy Poehler, who reprises her role as Joy.
Maya Hawke plays Anxiety, an emotion with complexity. While it can be debilitating, it can also help people plan and protect themselves.
"It did shift something for me where now when I get anxious, I try to ask anxiety, what is your intention?” Hawke said. “Because what I learned while doing this movie is anxiety has good intentions."
As Riley ages, Joy has to reconcile a hard truth: she may not be as prominent an emotion anymore.
What brings Poehler joy these days?
“Oh gosh, you know what I love? I love watching displays of joy,” she said. “I think the past decade and specifically the past 5 years have been wild and we haven't had a lot of celebration so watching celebration in real time really gets me."
Comedian Lewis Black returns as Anger – a character he said he unwittingly prepared for during childhood.
"We would watch the news, we'd watch Walter Cronkite, and my mother would literally, from the moment they started the news, she would start screaming at the TV, ‘Are you kidding me, they're doing that, they're out of their minds!’ It was during the Vietnam War,” he said. "(I learned) it's okay to just kind of yell at the TV, which is really how I made a living."
Paul Walker Hauser plays new emotion Embarrassment.
"A core memory I have of embarrassment is just saying the wrong thing when you're a little kid, or you don't know the definition of something and you say it and your parents are like, 'That was wildly inappropriate,' and you're like 'I'm sorry, I was listening to Lewis Black on Comedy Central,’” he said, laughing.
Tony Hale plays Fear and would give his 13-year-old self one piece of advice.
“In my business at least, they say 'You have value when this happens.' (But) whatever your success is, the value you have right now is going to be the exact same value you have when you have success,” he said.
Liza Lapira (who plays Disgust) added, "To steal from the movie, your value, your sense of self, is made up of all the components, not the cherry picked good ones. All of them build who you are.”
Funny, sweet and based on real research, “Inside Out 2” is both entertaining and legitimately informative - encouraging audiences to embrace the story, and their own emotions.
It’s rated PG and opens in theaters June 14.
Travel and accommodations provided by Walt Disney Pictures.
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