TSuch was the success of the first Inside Out film in 2015 that it must have taken countless acts of will and goodwill to stop the forces that immediately keep churning out new films and drying up the franchise as quickly as possible . Instead, a continuation of the coming-of-age story of 11-year-old Riley and her increasingly complicated inner life (joy, anger, fear, disgust and sadness, spoken by actors Amy Poehler, Lewis Black, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling and Phyllis Smith) was only produced this year. “Inside Out 2” introduces an adolescent Riley struggling with the onset of fear (Maya Hawke), envy (Ayo Edebiri), embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and a small but scene-stealing dose of ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). It was just as charming, imaginative, funny and loving as the first and surpassed it at the box office.

All of which means you can approach the four-part spinoff “Dream Productions,” set between the two films and set in the studio that puts together Riley’s dreams, in two ways: with Poehler-esque glee (more soon of the good things). ! Yay!) or Hawke Fear (oh no! Has the dam broken? Has the lure of the dollar become too great and we’ll soon be inundated with all the crap they were desperate to make money off of in the ten years between films?) .

Well, let the joy be limitless! It’s a Christmas miracle, but the quartet of nearly 22-minute episodes (with the exception of the finale, which lasts 27) are an unfailing delight. Packed with the wit, wisdom and jokes for the whole family like the originals, they follow dream director Paula Persimmon (Paula Pell) as she tries to keep her work relevant while now 12-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman) outgrows the cupcake -/unicorns/glitter confections that Paula has specialized in so far. Her greatest success was the dream that convinced young Riley to give up her doll in real life. But that is now starting to fade (in the truest sense of the word – dreams in Paula’s world, like emotions in the films, take the form of bright colored balls). On the warpath is Maya Rudolph as studio head Jean Dewberry (and with this and Paula Persimmon, I finally realize what the franchise reminds me of: Jayne Fisher’s “The Garden Gang” series of Ladybird books. To anyone else interested in a similar one project if…niche, itch – consider this my Christmas present to you).

Jean promotes Paula’s assistant director Janelle and instead pairs Paula with Xeni (Richard Ayoade, who has almost as much fun with the role as the writers have with him), a daydream director (“Scripts are the instruments of cowards! … There is no camera.” Only more! vision“) and, if you’re old enough to appreciate it, a pitch-perfect satire on a certain kind of indie presence in the industry. He wants to realize their first dream together, in which Riley plays with death (“The symbolism will be very rich”). To throw him off guard while she works out Riley’s first boyfriend dream, Paula makes him the director of a second unit (“Tear down the set! All we need are black frames and two fishbowls”), but suffice to say, that they will eventually have to learn to work together for the good of Riley and prevent disaster at the hands of those who know her less well.

Dream Productions is full of the details that made the original material so successful. There’s Paula’s pet melatonin (pet him enough and you’ll fall asleep). This is where the hierarchy is at work: dreams, daydreams, then the threat of degradation to “brainfarts”; the ambitious drawing Riley makes in class of her teenage self transforming into a real character in her dreams; and the well-developed relationship between the dream world, the real world, and Riley’s waking inner world (the personified emotions from the first film all appear here, some voiced by the actors who played them in the second film).

Above all, it is a generous, exuberant cause born of a desire to do something good for us all – a gift and not a franchise milked dry. It feels like someone wanted to make us happy instead of treating us as cash cows, and the idea of ​​giving viewers a few hours of escape and a happy ending was reason enough to welcome the old gang and some equally great new members to bring together Do it. Like I said – a Christmas miracle.