First “Inside Out” was released in theaters on June 19, 2015, and almost a decade later Disney and Pixar released the sequel “Inside Out 2”.While the first “Inside Out” followed Riley’s (Kensington Tall) youth life, this new addition to the saga follows a weekend Riley has to spend at Hockey camp. The movie shows how her social and personal life changes throughout the weekend.
The Movie kicks off with Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) creating a memory with Riley and then they send it to the “Back of the mind” where Riley builds up her character and the way she feels about herself. This is Joy’s method of making sure that Riley feels good about herself by repeating the phrase “I’m a good person” to herself. The next day Riley and her best friends Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) get invited to a Hockey camp for the Redhawks high school team for the upcoming school year. Another perk about this camp is that Riley’s favorite player will be Val Ortiz (Lilimar). These first scenes of the film set up the basics of the movie and also give you a feel of how the characters act and how they handle things with Riley.
The night before the hockey camp an alarm goes off and new emotions show up Embarrassment (Pual Walter Hauser), Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), and Anxiety (Maya Hawke). A few days later Riley’s parents are taking her, Grace, and Bree to the hockey camp. They bring up that they won’t be going to the same high school as each other. Riley takes this and starts going crazy. Anxiety then takes this information and decides to completely change Riley to impress Val so she can have a friend for high school and leave her old friends behind. Anxiety throws Riley’s present self to the back of the mind. Joy and the other emotions then start their journey to find it, restore it, and return Riley to her old self.
The new emotions in the film, help the old characters as well as the old characters develop more now because they are kind of opposites in a way. With Anxiety putting herself in control now all of the other emotions can’t do anything because they don’t have any control now. The scenes where Anxiety and the new emotions put themselves into control help imply how the movie is going to play out as well as how the plot will be set up for the rest of the movie.
Joy, Sadness, Disgust (Liza Lapira), Anger (Lewis Black), and Fear (Tony Hale) go off to the back of the mind to go and find Riley’s core self to help get her back. While Joy and the emotions are doing that, Anxiety and her new emotions are fully re-branding Riley and making her a new person in a bad way. This new Riley is now full of Anxiety and is always stressing out about little stuff and wants Val and the other Redhawk players to like her since Grace and Bree aren’t going to the same high school as her. During this time in the movie Anxiety and even Envy a little bit are making sure that they do everything in their power to make Val like them even if it means ruining her relationship with her old friends. This section of the movie is probably one of the most important scenes for the audience because it shows how much we can let overthinking and Anxiety change us into a person we don’t want to be. It also shows that when you are anxious you want to have Joy and actual feelings.
Joy and the original emotions eventually find Riley’s old self on a mountain of negative thoughts that were launched there by a mechanism Joy created to get rid of old thoughts. The core self is fading since Anxiety and the new emotions are creating a new core self in the headquarters. So they have Riley’s old self but the only way to get it back is to get it back up to headquarters and they need to do it quickly. They figure out they’re only way is to send Sadness through a tube that leads straight to headquarters.
Once Sadness reaches Headquarters with the help of Embarrassment she is able to replace the core self and get the old Riley back. When Anxiety is looking away, Sadness is able to replace Anxiety’s new self and put the old one back. By that time Joy and the other emotions arrive at headquarters and take the headquarters and the table back over, once they get up there Anxiety has Riley going crazy and she is very nervous in her hockey game. Joy tells Anxiety to “Let go” and once she does Riley stops overthinking and since Joy is back she starts to play better and be happy and not stress out so much. After this moment Grace and Bree go over to Riley and check on her and Riley apologizes for how mean she has been and asks if they can become friends again. The girls say yes and the tryouts end and it turns out all of them made the team. Even though the girls now go to different High Schools, they remain good friends.
Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and it had its moments of good and bad. My favorite part probably was the journey Joy and the other emotions had to take to go to get Rileys core self back. The animation style is very good and helps the colors and little details tie everything together perfectly. One criticism I do have is that I wish some of the new emotions like Ennui played more of a role in the movie instead of being casted as one of the main characters, but it is very forgettable and doesn’t really add anything to the story. I also wish the movie was based over more of her teenage years instead of just one weekend. Besides the few things I said the movie was pretty good and would put in as an above average Pixar and Disney movie. I rate this movie a 7/10
