Review of INSIDE OUT 2: Anxiety-Ascendant Adolescence

June 12, 2024

Riley (Kensington Tallman) had just turned thirteen and was doing very well in school. She and her best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu) were doing very well in their ice hockey team as well. They were invited by high school ice hockey Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown) to join her summer camp. Riley was very excited because she knew she would get to play with her ice hockey idol Val Ortiz (Lilimar). 

Meanwhile, inside Riley's brain, her basic emotions -- Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Liza Lapira), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Tony Hale) -- were thrown into a panic when the puberty alarm sounded off. Their control panel was replaced with a new orange one to accommodate the new emotions coming in -- Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopolous) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

The first "Inside Out" (2015) was about Riley's emotions as a child up to age 11. For this sequel, Riley hits adolescence, and as we all know, a whole new range of emotions come in to address the new life experiences we have in this awkward segment of our lives. We spend less time at home, and spend more time outside trying to fit into whole new groups of acquaintances, something that caused us to have sleepless nights of uncertainty. 

Writers Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein would have us believe that Anxiety was the main emotion during our adolescence. it pushes all other emotions aside as it fed our ego endless lines about not being good enough. In our desperate effort to make other people like us, our anxiety would just make us needlessly overthink about situations we get ourselves into. Joy's line of realization really hit very hard, "When you're growing up, you feel less joy."

While understandable, Anxiety's dominance in Riley's teenage personality (and in this movie) felt excessive and over-the-top. Anxiety's usurpation of Riley mind was disturbing, making the PG rating appropriate. This meant that the other new emotions did not have much to do except be Anxiety's "henchmen," which was a disappointment. Embarrassment's close connection with Sadness was cute, but was not really explained too well in psych terms.  

It is very difficult to create a sequel following a very innovative original and sustain its quality. Pixar had proven that they can do this with the "Toy Story" (2005) series (but then there was "Cars 2"). "Inside Out" boldly took on human psychology, so it is going to be trickier to balance kiddie and adult humor as Riley gets older. We did see a teaser of a future emotion named Nostalgia (voiced by 94-year old actress June Squibb), and I am all for that one. 7/10.