When Inside Out debuted in 2015, I wondered whether Pixar had hit on a formula that might lend itself well to additional stories. Pete Docter’s film followed the interior life of a young girl and her anthropomorphized emotions as they navigated a series of life changes. It was deeply funny, creative and moving, and quickly became accepted as one of Pixar’s best. Walking out of the theater, I felt like there was an opportunity to revisit Riley over the years in an animated take on the Before or Up movies, exploring how her emotions shifted and changed over time.
It’s too early to tell whether we’ll ever follow Riley through adulthood and into middle age, but Inside Out 2 suggests it might not be a bad idea. Like the first film, this sequel finds new ways to explore the complexities of our inner lives and would make an excellent double feature with Pixar’s Turning Red for films dealing with the emotional and physical complications of puberty (I know it’s not Pixar, but let me just make the case to add Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and make it a triple feature since so many of you slept on it the first time).
Inside Out 2 takes place a few years after the first film, in which we learned that Sadness (Phyills Smith) and Joy (Amy Poehler) must coexist in order for Riley to have an emotionally rich life. During that time, Riley seems to have thrived. She’s a hockey star alongside her friends and was just invited to join high school hockey camp. But the morning of camp, the emotions – Joy, Sadness, Disgust (Liza Lapira), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Tony Hale) – wake to find the brain in disarray. A red light signaling the start of puberty is flashing, and it’s not long before everything is in chaos. A renovation of headquarters is underway, emotional reactions are more sensitive and there’s a gang of new feelings ready to get to work. These new emotions are led by Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and include Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Envy (Ayo Edibir) and Ennui (Adèle Exarchopolous). The rush of new emotions jostling for control of the board comes at a bad time for Riley, who has just learned that her friends won’t be following her to high school and is desperate to impress the star of the hockey team.
Inside Out was such a burst of creativity and gained so much from taking place inside the unbridled landscape of a child’s mind that a sequel can’t realistically hope to recapture its originality or energy. And it’s initially a tad disappointing that the film’s structure hangs on another journey through the brain and yet another lesson Joy about how Joy can’t push Riley’s negative memories to the back of the mind. And yet, if Inside Out 2 doesn’t go bigger, it goes deeper, building on its predecessor to explore the complexities of emotions and their role in building our beliefs and guiding our actions.
One of the film’s most ingenious developments regards how Riley’s emotions and experiences construct her sense of self, instilling in her the belief that she’s a good person and a loyal friend. As a kid, it’s easy to have that confidence, but what happens as Anxiety, Embarrassment and Envy cause her to second-guess those deeply held beliefs and prompt her to act in ways antithetical to her values? The film’s emotional journey to rescue Riley’s sense of self from being buried in her bad memories is a potent metaphor.
Just as Inside Out creatively brought the inner life of a child to life, Inside Out 2 explores how that all might shift in adolescence. It’s no surprise that, for instance, Riley’s Friendship Island is now massively larger than Family Island, or that Imagination Land’s french fry forest has been replaced by Mount Crushmore. While the road trip has long become the go-to Pixar story device, the sequel continues to mine it for flights of fancy with amusing trips to the Stream of Confidence, a jaunt down to the Parade of Future Careers, a stop at the Sar-Chasm and more. It’s inventive and often funny, and serves as a helpful tool to help children process their own inner lives – particularly as Riley and her emotions discover that our very selves are a mix of good, bad, inconvenient and surprising, often contradicting each other.
The film doesn’t give Riley a major life upheaval or place her in a high-stakes adventure. Instead, the script by Meg LaFauve, Dave Holstein and director Kelsey Mann limits Riley’s challenge to one weekend at sports camp. On its own, it may seem an innocuous decision. But anyone who is or has been a teenager understands the way those initial moments of being put in spotlights or navigating rifts with friends can feel like tectonic shifts. The film has a great deal of fun capturing Riley as she bounces back between anxiety, embarrassment and envy – ennui mostly pops in for an eye roll – but it also perfectly depicts the out-of-control, constant ping-pong of feelings and confusion that accompany even the most mundane interactions in puberty. As a parent, it’s easy for me to look at moments like these in my kids’ lives (one of whom is about Riley’s age) and think “why is this such a big deal.” But for young people in the midst of this, losing friendships or having their self-worth challenged can feel foundation-shifting.
While the entire cast continues to be a delight – Black’s Anger gets even more chances to shine – I imagine Anxiety will be the emotion most people walk away thinking about. A spindly orange creation with giant teeth and frazzled hair, the emotion is perfectly voiced with a mix of false confidence and hyper-caffeinated neuroses by Maya Hawke. Much like Joy, Anxiety sees itself as a defense mechanism for Riley, hijacking her imagination to project future threats and create a plan for every possible thing that could go wrong. Although the character means well, it’s not long before they have control of the board and are trying to build a new, stronger sense of self for Riley – but one built on insecurity, desperation and panic.
Like many, many people who will see this movie, I struggle pretty strongly with anxiety. While it’s a bit better today, social anxiety is fairly common for me, and some health issues a few decades back sparked some general anxiety issues. Thanks to medication and meditation, I have a little more control, but there was a time when panic attacks were a fairly common occurrence. A scene late in the movie where Anxiety is so out of control that it freezes everything is one of the truest depictions of a panic attack I’ve seen, and in an age where many young children are dealing with anxiety and panic from an early age, this might help them understand what’s going on when those overwhelming feelings appear (I’d imagine this is going to be good for many adults as well). And I appreciate that the movie doesn’t portray Anxiety as an out-and-out villain but an emotion that has its place but also needs to be told when to calm down and let go.
To say much would be a spoiler, but Inside Out 2 ends up in a place I found deeply moving, celebrating the unique and complex combination of feelings, memories and values that make up each person and also allowing Riley to move into a place of more emotional maturity. I also don’t want to suggest that any of this is an inaccessible, overly intellectual exercise. It’s just as colorful and inventive as the first film; I love the way the film revels in the cartoony designs of the emotions – particularly Embarrassment, constantly hiding with its giant nose poking out of a hoodie. The actors are predictably solid — Phyllis Smith continues to be a highlight — and the story has its own surprises that often had me laughing hard – I won’t say more, but the characters introduced in Riley’s vault of secrets steal the entire film. If it feels a bit like we’ve seen it before, it’s also wise enough not to repeat too many of the first film’s jokes or cheaply call back to its most memorable moments (sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s no Bing Bong, and that’s probably good).
And I think even more that Pixar might want to consider shelving Buzz and Woody and making this the studio’s go-to franchise. I’d love a romantic comedy that explores Riley’s emotions as she falls in love in her twenties or a comedy that explores the confusion, stress and joy of parenting. Our interior lives don’t stay the same as we age, and just when we think we have a grip on our emotions, they find ways to surprise us. What fertile ground for a series to explore.