June 21st: Inside Out 2

The chaos of a teenager’s mind. Perhaps the greatest horror concept ever conceived.

Inside Out 2

Released: 2025

Directed by: Kelsey Mann

Starring: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Tony Hale

I taught thirteen year olds for nearly 20 years. I have a pretty good feeling of how they act. They are clever and ignorant. Selfish and compassionate. Nervous and overly confident. Mean and kind. They are enigmas wrapped in puzzles wrapped in confusion wrapped in a smelly, growing shell. Inside Out 2 gets a lot of things right. And when it does, it’s brilliant. It also gets some things wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way an expert on adolescent behavior, like the experts they clearly consulted. There are ideas explored that I absolutely would have missed. That’s why it is so brilliant. But, in service of telling the story they want, they simplify some things and miss some parts.

The story is about how Riley’s emotions reckon with her entering puberty. Riley has turned 13, and as she begins her teenage years she gains new emotions to navigate: Ennui, Envy, Embarrassment, and most importantly, Anxiety. Anxiety is very much like Joy was in the first film: she believes she knows what is best for Riley. However, while Joy tried to preserve Riley’s happiness in the present, Anxiety attempts to engineer Riley’s future. She quickly takes control of the new emotions and isolates the original five from the control center. As a result, Riley becomes increasingly focused on popularity and hockey success, putting the things she already values — especially her friendships — in jeopardy.

There is the crux of the problem I have with the portrayal of Anxiety in this movie. She is focused on Riley having friends at a new school and being liked by Val Ortiz. She takes reckless actions like stealing the puck from a teammate and going hard into Riley’s friend, Grace. But when that occurs, Riley has a panic attack. Does Anxiety have her think about her friend? No. Anxiety’s entire focus is self-centered on what she thinks Riley wants for herself. But real Anxiety would be concerned about everything that concerns Riley. Her friends. Her family. Everything, not just popularity and a sense of belonging. Anxiety may make her choose hockey over her friends. Or popularity over her friends. But it doesn’t even enter the calculation that Anxiety makes. Teenagers may generally think of themselves more than adults, but they often care deeply for their friends. They care about how they might appear to their friends. But, by flattening Anxiety’s worries, they simplified the emotion. There was an opportunity to explore all the things a teen would worry about but they focused on only a narrow view. Pixar understands that teenagers feel everything intensely. But in making Anxiety the engine of Riley’s identity crisis, they focus on the anxiety of being judged and accepted, while overlooking the anxiety of caring about others and failing them.

Small Observations:

• Where are the other emotions in the adults? Their Anxiety appears, but where is their Embarrassment or Envy? An explanation could be that after puberty, those emotions have less of an influence. But then where’s Nostalgia? That would be big in adults.
• The school that Riley goes to at the end is called Bay Area High School. That’s a weird name for a school. It’s like saying “Dallas-Fort Worth High School” or “Chicagoland High School”. You don’t name really local places after very generic geographic names.
• Embarrassment is the best new emotion. He seems very sweet and less destructive than the other three.
• MCU actors: 2

Overall Rank: A

The movie does a good job trying to capture the conflicting emotions of a teenager. It does feel like a few elements were simplified for the story rather than trying to express the full complexity of those emotions. Recommended.