Inside Out 2: The #1 film has a good head on its shoulders

(Spoilers ahead)

Leading up to the release of Inside Out 2 — the sequel to the 2015 Disney-Pixar film about different personified emotions guiding a young girl from within — rumors swirled about a possible turn toward ideological activism in the plot. With the release of the trailer, the rumors only intensified. 

But not only is Inside Out 2 not a shallow exercise in social indoctrination; it’s a psychologically rich and philosophically deep film, one whose exploration of identity flies in the face of the prevailing cultural winds. And it’s already the highest-grossing film of the year after just a few weeks in theaters.

As in the first film, five emotions—namely, Fear, Disgust, Sadness, Anger, and predominantly Joy—regulate a girl named Riley from a kind of control room in her inner world. Accessing various “islands” of core elements of her personality, moving around small translucent balls of particular memories, and maneuvering a large board that influences her behavior, the emotions do their best to keep Riley healthy and happy. And indeed she is: this innocent 13-year-old with braces is kind, happy, and successful, flourishing with her friends on their hockey team. 

But Riley and her emotions are in for a terrible shock: puberty. A demo crew arrives to tear apart the control room, making her usual emotions particularly raw and confused, and suddenly there arrive four newcomers that, unfortunately for Riley, will be here to stay: anxiety, envy, embarrassment, and ennui (boredom). As the new arrivals take over, Riley’s sense of self — a delicate blue shape that declares “I’m a good person” — is ripped away, together with core beliefs about herself and the world around her.

Riley’s inner turmoil coincides with a particularly difficult social trial: a hockey camp that pits her between two groups: two old friends who will soon be going to another school, and older, cooler girls who could secure for her a solid social standing for years to come. In the face of this confluence of inner and outer uncertainty, Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke, fresh off the wonderful Wildcat) sends the old emotions packing and takes control of operation Riley. 

Needless to say, Anxiety proves to be an erratic commandeer, and before long, Riley is making all kinds of destructive missteps out of worry and insecurity: she lies to her new friends about her likes, leans into sarcasm (creating literal “chasms” in her inner world), and sneaks into her future coach’s office to see what she’s written about her performance on the ice. She alienates her old friends more and more, yet feels less and less confident in her new position — and Anxiety’s desperate attempts to forge a new sense of self only yield a weak and stringy structure that says: “I’m not good enough.” Riley is poised on a precipice. 

The climactic scene of this coming-of-age struggle is as moving as it is illuminating. It will be especially meaningful to those who have faced the struggles of teenage alienation, mental illness, or both. Things come to a head on the ice, and Anxiety loses control, both over Riley and over itself. But Joy’s triumphant return to the control center with the naïve “I’m a good person” identity doesn’t restore peace to Riley, because it can’t. 

She’s realized that “I’m not good enough” is no way to live, but the old sense of self turns out to be just as inadequate to revealing who she is. It’s only in the coming together of both her goodness and wretchedness, both her beauty and her brokenness, that she finds the hope of becoming integrated and back in touch with reality. It’s a remarkable scene reminiscent of all that’s most wonderful and memorable about classic kids’ films. 

The story of course could have gone deeper into the soul — and higher toward the divine — when it comes to the questions of identity and self-worth. But Inside Out 2 is refreshingly attuned to basic truths. In the face of philosophers who insist that “the self” is no more than the brain, and that thoughts and beliefs are no more than illusions, it’s a beautiful reminder that man, as Augustine put it, is “a great deep”: there’s a mysterious interiority to human life that can’t be reduced to mere mechanisms.

In the face of social and cultural forces insisting that, when it comes to subjective identity, “anything goes” and openness and fluidity are sacrosanct, it’s a powerful recognition that a psychospiritual order is written into human nature.  

Disney, like Riley herself, stands poised on a precipice, facing an uncertain future. Will it be true to itself and its past? Or will it try to “fit in,” mistaking transgressive details for substance? If its creators have heads on their shoulders as good as Riley’s — not to mention any business sense — they’ll realize that Inside Out 2 is just the kind of kids' movie the culture wants and needs.