The animated film “Inside Out” captured our imaginations when we were young kids back in 2015, becoming an instant classic.
I remember watching the movie with my family and laughing so hard at Bing-Bing, being heartbroken when he died and watching Riley go through depression when all her emotions shut down, but not understanding what that truly meant until years later.
Now, nearly a decade later, “Inside Out 2” hit the big screen in the summer. The movie follows now 13-year-old Riley, ready to enter high school. But before she does that, she has to make it through ice hockey summer camp, along with her two best friends Bree and Grace, who she has discovered are not going to be in the same high school as her. This leads Riley to trying to become friends with the older kids at the hockey camp as her insecurities grow.
Besides encountering her original emotions of Anger, Fear, Disgust, Sadness and Joy, Riley now faces new emotions: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, Ennui and Nostalgia.
Joy and the other original emotions have to travel across Riley’s mind once again, to save Riley’s “sense of self,” an amalgamation of all her beliefs, as the new emotions take over.
As sequels go, the plot was pretty solid, and it had a nice balance between Riley and the emotions in her head.
The movie made Riley into more of her own person, a development I appreciated seeing. In the first movie, she felt more like someone that the emotions led along in life, and there was less focus put on her. In this movie, though, there was more focus on her trying to figure things out in life. It felt as if we were following a real person rather than, for a lack of a better word, a puppet.
I’m also going to be honest about one downside to the film: It made me cringe. A lot. But in a good way, because I felt like I could relate to the phases that Riley was going through, and it was making me curl up and wonder “Did I really do that?” Riley goes through the awkward stages of becoming a teenager in this movie and I know it’s not just me that relates to her.
There were also some elements that I felt like could have been done better such as Riley’s deep dark secret, which was revealed in the end credits as just a joke and nothing serious, which felt cheap.
Another new character, Val, is one of my favorite additions to the “Inside Out” franchise. Val is an older girl on the hockey team that Riley idolizes. I thought that Val was a great character; despite how little screen time she had, she tried to make sure Riley felt welcome on the hockey team.
Ennui, a fancy synonym for boredom, felt underutilized, as half the time she was just lying on the couch. While Ennui’s phone did come into play later in the movie, it still felt as though she could have played a larger role than she did.
Anxiety is one of the main characters in the story, beside Joy and Riley. Despite just wanting to help Riley, everything ends up going wrong to the point where even she couldn’t control it. Anxiety is always trying to figure out all the different possibilities and worrying so much, but it’s with the best intentions. Her character is incredibly well written, and she is arguably the best character in the whole movie.
The other emotions also felt like they were just there sometimes, and could have been expanded on more, not just to progress the plot but their characters as a whole.
I never really liked Joy in the first movie, and I can’t say I like her any better in this movie. She always felt like toxic positivity to me, and although she is a little better in this movie, I personally did not enjoy seeing her on screen that much.
The gap between the first and second movie actually ended up working out well because while I was 7 when the original movie came out, I’m now 16. In a way, it’s like all of us that watched “Inside Out” as kids have grown up with Riley, and we now understand her emotions and her as a person better.
I might actually enjoy this movie better than the first, and I think that that can be credited to the character of Anxiety for really pushing Riley into capturing every aspect of being a 13 year old. While I couldn’t fully relate to moving away from everything familiar in the first movie, I could relate to Riley going through all the awkward phases of first becoming a teenager in “Inside Out 2.”
I give this movie a strong 4 out of 5 Falcons, because although there are minor flaws, the movie isn’t just for the kids of today, but it is also for the adults and teenagers that grew up with the first movie.
