High Anxiety! (You Knew I Had To Go There, Right?)

Wherein I ramble about Inside Out 2

Is Inside Out Pixar’s next Toy Story?

Both films, after all, deal with childhood and the different stages of growing up. In the case of the Toy Story series, our relationship to toys as we grow up: how they trigger our imagination; how they become our companions and, even, only friends; how we replace them with other, more exciting toys; and what happens to them once we grow up and go out into the world, first to college and then to whatever the future holds for us, to infinity and beyond. Granted, the powers that be at Pixar found an easy way to perpetuate the IP by having Andy, the owner of those toys, give them to a shy, little girl named Bonnie at the end of Toy Story 3. A fifth chapter in the series will be released in 2026…wash, rinse, repeat.

Now, replace toys with emotions and a little boy with a little girl who’s been taken out of her natural habitat and has to adapt to a brand new world. However, unlike the Toy Story series, Inside Out acknowledges that these feelings are not unique to one individual in the way that the toys are for Andy (these toys are after all his). Inside Out creators Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen and Inside Out 2 writers Kelsey Mann (who also directs), Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein make clear from the very first shot to the last that while emotions like Joy, Sadness, Anger and Envy are universal, how we experience them individually is different. And since, as we grow up, we are bound to experience new emotions, the possibilities for future entries in the series remain boundless, far more than in the Toy Story series, I would argue…as long as they are able break from the narrative mold established by the first film.

While the Toy Story, The Invisibles and Inside Out sequels and Finding Dory are far superior and moving than the cash grab that were Monsters U and Cars 2, at some point these stories will fall into a rut, into a feeling of “been there/done that/what’s next” for the audience. The fact that Disney has had better luck lately in telling the kind of imaginative and even culture-specific yet universal stories that were once Pixar’s trademark like Encanto, Moana (itself subject to a soon-to-be-released sequel) and even Zootropolis has not gone unnoticed by many of my fellow film critics and film lovers. The studio’s mucky-mucks didn’t help matters either by sending the unique and very personal (and much better) Turning Red, Soul and Luca straight into streaming.

The reason why Inside Out 2 works and is as enjoyable and charming and mind-blowingly imaginative as the first one is that it continues the story told in Part One. What at the end of Inside Out was a tease (a red button in the Emotions’ main control panel tagged “puberty”) here becomes the story’s catalyst. After overcoming the pain of leaving behind her friends and life in Minnesota after her father takes a job in San Francisco in the first film, the now 13-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman) has settled into a new life with her loving parents (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane). Her best friends are hockey teammates Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu); Reilly herself something of a celebrity as her school’s premier hockey player. Inside her head, Joy (Amy Pohler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) work in tandem to make sure that Riley lives the best life she can. Joy goes so far as sending those dark moments that actually shape our lives and who we are to the back of her mind. 

But on the night before Riley and her friends head off to a hockey camp led by the coach of the unbeatable high school team Riley has dreamed of joining, the puberty alarm goes off. Joy and her fellow emotions try as best they can to douse the fire when their entire set-up is knocked down by a construction crew and a new set of emotions appear out of the blue: Anxiety, the apparent leader of the group (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos). Anxiety has Riley’s next years mapped out with charts and scenarios on her laptop and, much like Joy during Riley’s early years, she absolutely knows what is best for Riley in this crucial stage of her life. Overeager to build a new set of values for the 13-year-old, Anxiety kicks Joy and her team out of the control room and into a vault where the girl’s darker secrets are kept (and where one of a handful of ingeniously hilarious setpieces takes place, involving a Bluesy Dog-type character that keeps breaking the fourth wall and a character from a video game who rolls into a human ball). In full control, Anxiety now has Riley behave in ways that may seem familiar to some: she turns her back on her old friends because they are not cool enough (and now will be going to a different high school than Riley), tries to ingratiate herself with the team’s star player and her inner circle and win at all costs, even if it means injuring her teammates.

Once they break out of the Vault, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgrace embark head towards the back of Riley’s mind to rescue and bring back the set of core values they helped build for her; here's where Mann, LeFauve and Holstein opt to take the easy way out by repeating the first film’s every single narrative beat. The journey takes them to previously trodden areas of her brain like Imagination Land but also to new regions, such as a room full of video monitors and desks from which multiple new scenarios, feelings and reactions are created at Anxiety’s command, and a cloud full of ideas in the form of, what else, light bulbs. 

While the original quintet of emotions shared a lot of the action, and screen time, on the first film, Ennui, Embarrassment and even Envy are given little to do by both Anxiety and the script. Of the trio of E’s, Embarrassment comes on top as he, as the group’s outcast, becomes a natural ally to Sadness. Inside Out 2 is, in the end, about two strong personalities fighting for control of a territory until they realize the errors of their way to the benefit of Riley. Anxiety means well; she just wants to guide Riley through this new stage in her life. But, just like the domineering Joy, only she knows what’s good for Riley, the other emotions just along for the ride. Her methods, though, are not exactly the most ethical.

I don’t begrudge any of the film’s flaws even though I feel like there was a missed opportunity here. After all, puberty is not exclusively about getting along with the cool crowd. It’s also about how our bodies change (pimples, anyone?) as well. This is where I wish they had used Embarrassment more because it can be embarrassing for us all to go through so many psychological, behavioral and physical changes at once. But the movie that we have in front of us achieves what it set out to do: to tell the next chapter in Riley’s growth and to do so entertainingly, inventively and intelligently. More importantly, in a film landscape lacking in family-oriented outside of a new Garfield movie and If, Inside Out 2 is a welcome alternative for parents looking for a meaningful, thoughtful and enjoyable movie they can share with their kids over and over. It, also like its predecessor, invites multiple viewings when it comes to the visual and verbal jokes sprinkled throughout.

And the series does lend itself to future chapters. I can’t wait to see what happens when Riley faces the reality of love, of pulling an all-nighter in order to turn in a term paper on time and, maybe, a couple of decades from now, menopause.

One final word of advice: no matter how many times you’ve heard us critics say this it still holds true, especially with Inside Out 2. Stay until after the credits end rolling, no matter how desperate any of your kids need to go wee wee. They can hold it. They will thank you for it.