Inside Out 2 (2024 | US | 96 minutes | Kelsey Mann)
Inside Out 2 finds us once again in the head of Riley, the young girl we grew with and cried for in Inside Out. This time, she’s just just a girl, she’s hit puberty and with it a whole host of new emotions. Riley hasn’t just grown up, she’s a star hockey player with two best friends and fantastic grades… so she’s on top of the world. Overnight, her emotional buddies (Joy, Anger, Disgust, Sadness and Fear) find their world crashing around them as “construction” is doing a complete overhaul of her emotional stability. In comes a few new friends: Anxiety, Ennui, Embarrassment and Jealousy. It looks like Anxiety is taking over the reigns from Joy and when the OG emotions try to stand in the way, they’re punted out into the depths. These new emotions are too much for Riley to handle and her sense of self starts to break down, the rug is pulled out from under her so she starts acting out in ways she never intends.
The new emotions introduced in Inside Out 2 are a lot more complicated than I had expected when walking in the theater. I think that’s because we forget that as teenagers we experience are the beginnings of what we deal with for the rest of our adult lives… they’re just intensified and confusing because it’s the first time we’ve dealt with them. There’s a lot of cognitive struggles and methods to deal with them in play as Riley attempts to figure out the new version of herself: what’s most important, who is important, why am I feeling the way I am and how do I handle it? The truly intriguing part of the film isn’t watching this young woman find herself, but to realize that all of us, young and old, still deal with a lot of this inner-turmoil now. The dirty little secret of being an adult is that sometimes (or more than sometimes) we’re just as lost and confused as we were in our teens. So definitely be prepared to be shot in the heart a few times as the story unfolds and try not to have an existential crisis.
Not only could every person in the theater relate to Riley and her emotions in some way, but it addressed the complexities of how we choose to move forward when we’re faced with tough decisions. Yea, Riley was just trying to work through friend issues, but these things don’t get any easier as we age even though we may have been through the same situation a dozen or more times. Learning who we are in the process is the only thing that makes us slightly wiser so that next time we can know where to start from. Or we just keep struggling with it and hope we make the right choices. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it, jeez. While it is a kids’ movie technically, there weren’t all the typical silly jokes that you want to roll your eyes at or super sappy sentimentality that you have come to expect. There is one moment of super sap, but I can deal with that. There also weren’t a ton of inside jokes just thrown in for adults so they have a good time at a kids’ movie. They were subtle, thoughtful and worthy of being a part of the dialogue. All in all, it’s another hard-core tearjerker just like its precursor, but well worth the tears.
Inside Out 2 arrives in theaters on 6/14