Inside Out 2 is Giving Anxiety and the Giving is Good
When the first INSIDE OUT premiered in 2015, my niece, Jasmine, asked me to see it together. As an animation girl, it was an easy call. Even before I earned my press badge and, therefore, had to spend my own money. I didn’t expect that movie to hit me in the head like a therapist throwing down an emotional gauntlet, forcing me to process not only Riley’s issues but my childhood too. How did a kid’s movie balance philosophy, psychiatry, spirituality, and sociology while being a warmly hilarious coming-of-age for all ages? I don’t know—but Jasmine and I were sure they couldn’t do it again.
Well, spoiler alert, INSIDE OUT 2 lives up to the legend. They did it again!
Riley (then Kaitlyn Dias, now Kensington Tallman) is a little older now. She has strong bonds with her friends, Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green), the three play hockey together, Riley is a star player, and her moral center—what the movie calls her “Core Beliefs”—is strong. Riley even lets her dad (Kyle MacLachlan) continue to call her ‘monkey’ and her mom (Diane Lane) ruffle her hair. Life is in rhythm and Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Liza Lapira, previously Mindy Kaling), and Fear (Tony Hale, previously Bill Hader) are in harmony.
THEN THE PUBERTY SIREN GOES OFF and Riley gets flipped, turned upside down.
New—more complex emotions—move into the brainborhood. Namely Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui (voiced by Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri, Paul Walter Hauser, and Adèle Exarchopoulos). The teenage years are fraught with emotional upheaval and, babies, Riley isn’t handling it well. Neither is Joy, who has to share the command center with someone new. A psychological landscape erupts. Recalibrating will take more than big hugs and fluffy dreams—and Pixar knows how to give us more.
One of my colleagues, Eddie Pasa, told his daughters that INSIDE OUT 2 is a documentary. I feel that in my soul. Other than Amelie, no franchise has felt more me, but no franchise except INSIDE OUT 1 & 2 has ever been more universal—this is us.
The animation is gorgeous, seamlessly weaving the textures of the real world, the dreamy bubbles of the psyche, and the 2D imagery of childhood. But beyond the delicious visuals, the story is an arrow straight to the core of all of us. I share Riley’s anxiety, her propensity towards Joy, and the Big Dark Secret of her childhood. And I don’t have to ask because I already know there is a blending of her emotional makeup in you too. That’s what the team behind INSIDE OUT 2 understands so well, but while they fire that arrow straight into our hearts they deliver it with a wit that makes us feel—seen, valid, and whole. All that upheaval is accompanied by glorious puns and an acute understanding of what coming of age truly means.
