Pixar's cheap Freudianism mistakes puberty for existential collapse. The pre-teen mind, rendered as a garish control panel, becomes a battleground for cloying emotions. Nostalgia, a recurring sickness in contemporary cinema, infects "Inside Out 2," reducing complex feelings to simplistic, gendered caricatures. The absence of true darkness—no suicidal emotion—reveals a profound lack of courage, replaced instead with the saccharine implication that vaping fixes everything. The film peddles adolescent lust as a "deep dark secret," exposing the filmmakers' fear of genuine emotional exploration. "Inside Out 2" is less a film than a corporate-sanctioned lobotomy, leaving the viewer stupified by its utter lack of originality or insight.