Inside Out 2, produced by Pixar, was released in June of 2024. It was the sequel to the Oscar winning production Inside Out released in 2015. The film portrays Riley’s life when her emotions become more complex as she enters the next stage of her life.
This film became the highest-grossing animated film of all time, making $1.46 billion due to its appeal to all ages with young kids enjoying it, fans of the first movie coming back for the sequel, and adults who understand what it’s like to be a teenager.
It features Maya Hawke who plays Anxiety and takes on a large portion of the movie. It also features most of the original cast with Amy Poehler as Joy, Lewis Black as Anger, and Phyllis Smith as Sadness. Both Fear and Disgust were recast in the sequel with Tony Hale playing Fear and Liza Lapira playing Disgust.
In the movie, they add five new emotions that help develop Riley as a character. They are Anxiety, Embarrassment, Ennui (boredom), Envy, and Nostalgia.
The movie begins with Riley attending a hockey camp with her best friends. While she is there, she starts to wonder whether she should stay with her old friends or branch out to hangout with the older “cool” girls.
The new emotion Anxiety completely takes over, making the decisions all by herself, ultimately leaving the original emotions behind. I thought the symmetry between these plots of leaving behind what you know for something you are unfamiliar with, but appears as the “better option” makes the movie enticing and grabs the attention of the watcher.
I thought that a strength of this production would be how they show the emotions directly influencing the choices that Riley makes and we can see that when one emotion takes over, her decisions start to make less and less sense. Ultimately showing the true meaning of balance.
A weakness in this film would be the lack of screen time that the other new emotions got. Anxiety got the majority of the time during the film and I thought there could have been more scenes with the other new emotions showing how they affect Riley too.
In my opinion, I thought that the film was well-made because of its comical parts and more serious parts that showed how life isn’t always perfect and that there will always be moments when we struggle. Overall, I thought that this movie was worth going to see.
