Inside Out 2 review – an inventive and moving return to form for Pixar

How typical of Pixar to make a summer sequel that explores normative social influence and introduces us to a Gallic character called Ennui, only to give said character a nickname (Wee Wee) guaranteed to make under-10s giggle. The company has struggled recently to connect with audiences. Kelsey Mann’s fizzily ambitious epic deserves to buck that trend.

In the 2015 original, the San Francisco-based Andersen family possessed brains controlled by five emotions. Now that the heroine, Riley, has turned 13 and acquired whiffy armpits, a new feeling, Anxiety, (hilariously voiced by Maya Hawke) takes control of headquarters. With the help of Envy, Embarrassment and the aforementioned Ennui, Anxiety muzzles Amy Poehler’s Joy, so that Riley can pass as cool during a weekend at an ice-hockey summer camp.

Admittedly, some elements of the plot create a sense of deja vu. Once again the indefatigable cheerleader Joy takes a journey through the colourful hinterlands of Riley’s mind and learns a useful lesson about so-called painful memories. What’s new is the subtle message that tribalism is toxic. And it’s subtle because the girls Riley wants to impress are nice (the world we’re in is less Lord of the Flies than lord of the high-flyers).

The pressure to belong to a winning team leads to a panic-attack sequence as moving, and visually inventive, as anything in those impeccable Pixar spin-offs Toy Story 2 and 3. It’s hard not to sob as Riley’s anguished inner voice hammers home a newly forged belief (that she’s a failure). It’s equally upsetting to watch Anxiety, frozen with terror, inside a dense, fluorescent-orange forest of looping thoughts.

Is Inside Out 2 as memorable as the original? To borrow a word popular with Ennui, “Non!” Is it a must-see? Oui oui.

• In UK and Irish cinemas now