Pixar returns to Riley’s mind with a host of new emotions in Inside Out 2.
There’s no feeling in the world quite like being proven wrong when you’ve wildly underestimated a movie. There’s something so satisfying about a brilliant piece of art letting you know your doubt was misplaced. When Pixar announced a sequel to Inside Out, it felt so unnecessary, like another Disney cash-grab designed with just the box office in mind. But I should’ve known better. Pixar has a track record that shouldn’t be doubted, and Inside Out 2 again proved why the studio has been at the top of the animation game for nearly three decades. Inside Out 2, like its predecessor, is a beautiful and poignant film, the kind that only Pixar could’ve produced. And it’s exactly the movie we need at this specific moment in time.
Inside Out 2 returns to Riley’s world after she turns 13 and high school is just around the corner. There’s obviously a lot happening in your life at that point, and the inner workings of Riley’s brain certainly reflect that. The onset of puberty and the news that her two best friends won’t be going to the same high school as her send Riley for a loop, providing an opportunity for a new group of emotions to take up residence in her mind’s control center.
Over the course of a three-day hockey camp, where Riley is around the older girls that she will potentially be friends with next year (should she make the team), these new emotions perform a hostile takeover of Riley’s mind. The familiar emotions of Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) are all forced out as the new group, led by Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and joined by Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui Adele Exarchopoulos), and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), believes that a new version of Riley is necessary if she wants to set herself up for future success. There’s no room for an emotion like Joy when Riley suddenly has to worry about every single thing that could happen over the next four years and how each decision she makes at this weekend-long camp could doom her for all of high school. Well, that’s at least how Anxiety sees things.
Anxiety may not be the “protagonist” of Inside Out 2, but she’s certainly the nucleus of the entire film (as well as Riley’s mind). It’s fitting for the actual manifestation of Anxiety to be the star of a film in the year 2024; this is a complex emotion that most of us are experiencing in different and more prominent ways than ever before, and Inside Out 2 had every opportunity to make Anxiety the conquerable villain that we’d all like to defeat. Think about the cheers that would erupt from the adults in the theater if Joy were to slay the great anxious dragon and declare Riley’s mind a worry-free space for all eternity.
But that’s not reality. It’s not the feel-good story that Pixar is interested in. Anxiety exists and there is no way to banish it forever. It’s something we have to live with. So instead of casting our anxiety into the abyss, Inside Out 2 offers an alternative: What if Anxiety, like Joy or Sadness, is a good thing to have in small doses?
Yes, that sentence makes it seem like Inside Out 2 might just be rehashing the whole point of the first movie, but that’s not really doing it justice. Inside Out was about accepting that humans are complex creatures and experiencing more than just happiness can enrich our lives. Inside Out 2 has a little bit of that, but it’s more about our reactions. How do we deal with the difficult emotions when they arise? Where do we turn when the anxiety quite literally runs circles around our minds, too fast for us to even keep up?
We look inward, at the self we’ve created and built confidence in over the course of our lives. Loving and understanding yourself, showing yourself grace — these are the things that Inside Out 2 wants to leave us with. It’s easier said than done, obviously, but director Kelsey Mann’s film does a fantastic job of showing us the hope and victory that we inherently have within us.
This is the type of movie that every adult in the audience will watch and think, “I wish I had seen this when I was younger.” There’s something about watching an anxiety attack play out in real time that gives you a sense of peace and comfort. It’s scary, but it’s fleeting, and a 13-year-old hockey player is able to get through it. There’s no reason why you can’t do the same.
As deep as Inside Out 2 is, this is also a thoroughly funny film. Don’t think you’re paying just to sit through an animated therapy session (though, that actually sounds great). This is a deep film that will make you think and feel plenty, but it knows exactly where your funny bone is and makes use of that knowledge often. Perhaps the most consistent source of laughs throughout the entire movie is a 2D cartoon fanny pack that floats, talks, and gives you just what you’ve been looking for (a la Dora the Explorer’s backpack). That may sound completely unhinged and out of place, but trust me on this one, you don’t want to know anything else ahead of time.
Inside Out 2 is one of Pixar’s best sequels, finding ways to enrich the world created by the original while still charting its own unique path. An epic adventure overflowing with both heart and humor; it’ll make you laugh, cry, think, and, most importantly, feel.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Pixar’s Inside Out 2 arrives in theaters on June 14th.
