Positive Elements
Like its predecessor, Inside Out 2 does a whale of a job depicting what’s going on in a kid’s (and, let’s be honest, an adult’s), mind. We’ll have more to say about that in our Conclusion, though, and in this section, I want to concentrate on the characters we meet. And we start with perhaps the least likable of all.
Anxiety isn’t inherently bad. Just like every other emotion bouncing around in Riley’s head, Anxiety just wants what’s best for the girl. She explains that while Fear protects Riley from the obvious dangers she can see, Anxiety protects her from the dangers she can’t. And while the word anxiety has an almost universally negative connotation, it’s at the root of a lot of what we do and strive for. (My own little orange anxiety character, for instance, reminds me to be careful with what I write and how I write it. Don’t miss anything, it tells me. Reflect the movie fairly. If my own manifestation of Joy was in the driver’s seat right now, I’d probably not care that much about such things; I’d be just having too good a time writing.)
But Anxiety can get a little carried away (to put it mildly), and it’s up to the other emotions to save the day. So Joy leads our more familiar emotions on a rambling quest to fix Riley’s sense of self-worth, and many of the newcomers (particularly Embarrassment) do what they can to help, if a bit belatedly.
Then, of course, you’ve got Riley’s real-world friends and family.
Riley’s mother and father are still very supportive of their little girl (even as they buckle up for the pubescent roller coaster now in full swing). But they take a backseat here to Riley’s friends.
She and her two besties, Bree and Grace, have been inseparable for a good long while now, and we can see their shared affection. But (much to Riley’s surprise), Bree and Grace are being transferred to a new school, and Riley’s facing the prospect of diving into high school without her reliable support structure.
Into that looming void steps Valentina, a hockey star who made the high school team as a freshman (which, we gather, is almost unheard of). You could argue that Valentina isn’t the best of influences on Riley, but it’s not Val’s fault: The older girl is very kind to Riley—doing everything you’d hope she’d do to make Riley feel welcome.
Meanwhile, Riley herself makes some pretty bad choices here. But she makes some good ones, too. And in flashbacks, we see critical moments in her life where she formed her healthy self-worth: She befriends Grace in an awkward moment, for instance. She shares the puck on the ice. She still enjoys being goofy with her mom and dad. Because of these moments and others, she believes herself to be a good person. And mostly, she is.