‘Inside Out 2’ Review | Envy, Anxiety, and Embarrassment Introduced as Riley Faces the Turbulence of Puberty
By: Eboné Chatman
Inside Out is back, and not only are all of Riley’s original emotions returning, but we also have three new ones joining the crew: Envy, Embarrassment, and the troublemaker herself, Anxiety, as Riley navigates puberty.
The movie explores what a typical teenager might experience as they approach adulthood. Riley (Kensington Tallman) is now 13 years old, and headquarters is working overtime to manage all her emotions.
The big red siren sounds off, indicating the start of puberty, and headquarters is immediately under construction as renovation workers tear down walls and install a new console to accommodate Riley’s adolescent feelings. Her original emotions—Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale), Disgust (Liza Lapira), and Joy (Amy Poehler)—become “suppressed emotions” and get pushed to the back of the mind along with her original “Sense of Self” as Riley’s new emotions push them out of headquarters and take over. The original emotions work hard throughout the movie to get back to headquarters to help Riley keep her “Sense of Self” intact, as this affects how she thinks about herself and treats others.
The film’s director, Pixar animation veteran Kelsey Mann (making his feature filmmaking debut), and the screenwriters, Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein, build on the earlier film’s whimsical, imaginative idea of how thoughts, memories, and emotional expression are stored and displayed in the mind. This second movie puts us right back on the emotional roller coaster.
The new crew of feelings are full of wit and bring an element of relatability to the new emotions that we all dealt with as teenagers and still contend with as adults: self-doubt, questionable decision-making, balancing feelings, and the drive to do your best, no matter what—but what is too far?
Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), Ennui (“boredom,” voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos), and of course the star of the movie, Anxiety (Maya Hawke), have a lot of work to do to get Riley to the next step in life, as this is her last summer before high school. Riley just led her middle-school hockey team to the championships and is about to spend three days at hockey camp. But she’s thrown for a loop when she learns that her two best friends, Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu), won’t be attending the same high school as her. Riley struggles with wanting to make her future high school hockey team, the Fire Hawks, as the team’s coach runs the camp. This was her time to shine and show the coach she was worthy of making the team. However, this is just the beginning of the hard decisions the young teen will have to make throughout the movie.
At hockey camp, Riley thinks she needs to impress Valentina and the team’s other “cool kids,” no matter the cost. She mistakenly believes her two best friends are abandoning her, as they are both attending the same high school without Riley. This idea becomes the first defining moment of grown-up decision-making, as she begins to have tunnel vision about making the team and leaving her friends behind. Anxiety is the one driving the switchboard on this one!
Inside Out 2 | Official Trailer
As we all know, anxiety can take over at times, and mixing that with a little bit of fear can give us a false sense of self. This is exactly what Riley experiences as Anxiety takes over and pushes Riley to ignore her friends to hang out with the “cool kids,” choose friends over family, sneak into the coach's office, and ultimately crash her sense of self. This is WAR, as all the emotions are fighting to see who is better suited to take control of the switchboard of emotions. In the end, it’s realized that a balance of all the emotions is needed to create the complex people we all grow into.
“Inside Out 2” explores the desire to fit in and to be validated by Cool Culture, which seems to be our collective seal of approval for success. The movie captures early adolescence perfectly, as the growth between middle school and high school is drastic, with emotions, feelings, and thoughts changing at a rapid pace.
This is a winner in my book for Pixar, finding the sweet spot that merges the gaze of children and adults. The movie is really about all the small choices we make that shape our personalities and solidify our sense of self. We are left with a great cliffhanger, and I’m excited to see how they continue this storyline of young adulthood.
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Meet Eboné Chatman, Producer & Media Correspondent for 247 Live Culture!