...or, as Japan calls it, Inside Head 2. I haven't seen the first one, but Natsuki watched it three times (once in English and twice in Japanese), so I ended up taking him to the cinema for one of the latter. He sees no significant difference between the different language versions, for what it's worth.

Personally, I was impressed by the quality of Pixar's localisation. There's a Japanese song over the end credits and a completely-from-scratch re-rendering of all on-screen text (e.g. "Imagination Land" and some newspapers or flyers). From the trailers, though, the film I most wanted to see was the live-action Cells at Work, coming in December. Incidentally, this was the first time in years I'd visited a Japanese cinema and I was left wondering if the proportion of Japanese films there has risen. There weren't many English-language movies being advertised at all. There were still one or two, including the next Captain America... but also a Bollywood film. (Or else Mollywood. From India, anyway.)

Anyway, Inside Head 2.

I love the idea. The emotion-protagonists concept is great (and they're not just the Numskulls, despite similarities). It's a genuinely new kind of story... and Pixar took their research seriously, consulting both psychologists and real teens to ensure that they were accurately portraying changing teenage emotions and modern teenage life. (Teenage development is a satisfying, natural way of expanding the emotion-cast of the first film.) Pixar ditched a proposed character called Shame, for instance, because the psychologist said that's not an emotion.

Unfortunately, the result is that the emotions' teenage host (Riley) is being a twat for most of the film. True to life, absolutely. Supported by the research and telling a story that will resonate with viewers of that age, yes. Necessary for narrative weight, yes yes yes. It pays off in a satisfying ending... but I still found it a bit painful to watch.

The cast is great. All the emotions are inventively evoked and endlessly watchable. The funniest for me was Anger, although he doesn't do much here, but I'd also pick out Ennui and the bad 1990s CGI video game character. (The latter's scene goes a bit Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with different animation styles alongside Pixar's modern CGI.)

The premise is so cool that you might find yourself wondering what you'd do with it. I'd have considered a crossover between what's in different people's heads (a sort of alien invasion!) but unfortunately the different versions of each emotion are all so similar that it wouldn't be that interesting. For ease of audience recognition, they're unchanged bar visual tweaks like hairstyle, glasses, etc. Mind you, Joy would make a scary villain. She radiates utter confidence even when, say, deleting memories she thinks you don't need (although we'll learn she's putting up a front).

My only criticism is that the world in Riley's head could have been far stranger and more interesting. It's just a place. Doors, chairs, tables, etc. The brain control room looks like the Starship Enterprise... and I've just discovered an amusing post from someone saying "I watched Inside Out 2 with Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock and they paired perfectly". It's not even as weird as, say, Cells at Work, let alone what we'd have got from Paul Magrs or Neil Gaiman. Pixar seem to like portraying an "ordinary blokes at work" level. See Monsters Inc, or The Incredibles, or even the toys in Toy Story and their residents' association meetings.

This has been the highest-grossing Pixar film to date and the highest-grossing film so far of 2024. Natsuki prefers it to the first Inside Out, which I now need to watch. Personally, I struggled a bit with Riley's teenager-ness, but the film's still great fun.