At The Movies: Inside Out 2 takes on puberty with compassion and humour

Inside Out 2 (PG)

97 minutes, now showing, 4 stars

The story: In this sequel to Inside Out (2015), Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) is 13 and yearning to be accepted by the popular girls. They are led by her idol, Valentina (American actress Lilimar), captain of the ice hockey team. In her head, the old team of Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black) and others have to share the console with new teenage emotions – among them Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

Shows that feature fantastical creatures, monsters or horrors as the physical manifestation of the main character’s trauma are plentiful, but rare is the movie that does the same for other parts of the psyche.

Inside Out (2015) belongs to that little-seen group and has since become beloved by millions. Much of its success is due to its layered approach to its subject, the mind and its mechanisms.

Joy (Poehler) is the group leader and the one on a mission to suppress unpleasant memories, represented in the movie by glowing balls flung to the back of the mind.

In the new film, older viewers can continue to play the game of seeing her as a mental defence mechanism – they can see her acts as wilful ignorance or wearing rose-tinted glasses – up to her old tricks of throwing painful imagery down the memory hole.

Younger viewers can enjoy the adventures when the gang have to trek from the back of the mind to the front. Along the way, they have to overcome various mental blocks, each represented by a clever pun or portmanteau playing on the idea of a geographical obstacle as well as a mental construct. If nothing else, one steps away from this movie fully aware of words borrowed from nature that have been applied to abstract concepts of the mind.

Inside Out 2 expands on the Inside Out mind-universe – Mindiverse, if you will – of the first film by adding items that appear in the heads of older children and teens. The child’s sense of who he or she is becomes more solid in pre-teen years, so now there is a Sense of Self, represented by an orb formed by tendrils of beliefs.

The strongest jokes here are about teen obsessions, such as with video game characters and looking cool. The droll Ennui, voiced by French actress Exarchopoulos, is a scene-stealer, almost on the level of Edna Mode, fashion designer for the superhero crowd in The Incredibles (2004). Her all-too-brief appearances leave one craving more.

This new work does not quite plumb the emotional depths of the first movie, but it is just as smart and entertaining.

Hot take: This coming-of-age adventure, set inside the head of a girl finding her way through high school, offers laughs and thrills, as well as lessons on mental wellness through puberty.