'Inside Out 2' Review: Pixar's Saving Grace to Theatres

Debut director Kelsey Mann’s highly successful sequel to Pixar’s Inside Out follows Riley, voiced by Kensington Tallman, now a 13-year-old teenage girl on the verge of entering puberty, going to a new school, and welcoming a whole new cast of emotions in this animated satire of an inner-mind workplace. Careful spoilers ahead.

Inside Out 2 begins with Riley about to enter a new stage of her life — teenage-hood. The film catches us up with a quick montage of where things are with Riley, who is an exceptional student fresh off winning the middle-school hockey championship and has just been invited to attend a summer hockey camp at her future high school with her two best friends she made in her new Bay Area surroundings. Before she attends the camp, back in HQ (the inside of Riley’s mind), a siren goes off in the middle of the night alarming our core emotions, Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira) that she is entering puberty. This revelation brings new renovations to HQ, an upgraded console, and more importantly a new set of emotions. Enter Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and the central character to this sequel -- Anxiety, voiced excellently by Maya Hawke.

In a deconstruction of how the human mind works and understanding one’s Sense of Self, in comes Anxiety along with the other new emotions playing foil to how Joy and the other core emotions will handle Riley’s three-day hockey camp. At the camp, Riley wants to impress the high-school team’s leader Valentina (Lilimar), who is her idol, and the camp’s coach (Yvette Nicole Brown). If Riley does well, she will have a chance to make the high school’s hockey team as a freshman just like Val did. But before Riley attends the camp and we get into the story, she gets hit with the news that her two best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grae Lu) won’t be attending the same high school. Now, with this in mind, Riley is determined to make the high school team at any cost as she is worried as any teen would be of being alone in a new setting and trying to fit in.

This drives our girl Riley to make some uncharacteristic choices like turning on her best friends and becoming a selfish teammate. But what really is transpiring is the new emotions led by Anxiety are waging a hostile takeover against the older emotions over the person they want Riley to be. Joy has been sending Riley’s worst memories to a distant realm in her mind called the “back of the mind” and places her best in an underground lake where her core beliefs are formed. Anxiety, who always prepares for the worst due to her namesake, begins to challenge Joy’s idea of who Riley should be and how she acts as she is preparing for camp, thus treating her friends differently. This internal struggle between the emotions ends with Joy and Co. being locked away and sent on a new journey of self-discovery through Riley’s mind while Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui begin to shape their own version of the 13-year-old. This all leads to the film’s climax, a gut-wrenching scene where Riley is suffering from what seems to be an anxiety attack from the internal struggles between the emotions until she is finally comforted by her friends.

The narrative of Inside Out 2 is a deeper transporting tale than its predecessor for what can only be described as a free therapy session. The two plots, one external and one internal, connectively show how the choices made in Riley’s mind by the emotions are impacting her in real life during a very difficult time in her life. Picking up off the success of the first film, directed by Pete Docter, the sequel playfully depicts a classic troupe: the older regime versus the newer. What this movie does best is show how anxiety can be crippling to one’s life. Anxiety’s worry and angst about helping Riley fit in during camp drive her to make Riley do unthinkable things and distance herself from her best friends to fit in with the high-school team, making the external character unravel. What Joy discovers along her journey is that the good and bad parts of Riley are what truly make her core beliefs as she can grow from each instance. This is something that all ages can relate to. Letting our anxiety takeover to such a point that we don’t think clearly and make irrational decisions. Joy in the climax is able to show Anxiety, who has unraveled herself, that we can’t worry about the things in life we can’t control. And though this may be a simple idea, it’s something that many people even in the later parts of life struggle with. In the film, Riley repeats “I’m a good person,” but her desire to be accepted by Val and make the team as a freshman is causing her beliefs to be drowned out by self-doubt and eventually destructive impulses.

The success of this film is not surprising given the incredible storytelling from Mann and screenwriter Meg LeFauve as it has grossed domestically about $155 million at the box office. The movie scored a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes with a 92% score and a 96% audience score as well. Pixar again delivers a quality animated film to theatres after what some will call a rough period from the studios as they tried to recapture some nostalgia with films like Finding Dory (2016) and Toy Story 4 (2019). Mann’s sequel joins the new Bad Boys in movies saving theatres as anticipated films Fall Guy and Furiosa failed to deliver. Inside Out 2 is able to expand on the universe inside Riley’s mind in a creative and thought-out way which includes a fortress of imagination and a vault bearing her deepest dark secrets. Add in some new jokes, new fun character designs, and a sensational voice cast, and you have yourself a much-needed successful sequel.