Has INSIDE OUT 2 become Go Woke?

By Movieguide® staff

Editor’s note: This is part of our review. Click here to read the full review, including our content analysis.

INSIDE OUT 2 is a sequel to the hit, critically acclaimed 2015 animated comedy from Pixar and Disney. Riley, the young girl from the first film, turns 13 and a group of unruly teenage emotions, led by Fear, take over Riley’s psyche and banish Riley’s other emotions, including Joy. INSIDE OUT 2 is a delightful, inventive, heartwarming film about doing the right thing, controlling your emotions, caring for your friends, both old and new, and promoting kindness, friendship, repentance and forgiveness.

When the film opens, Riley has just turned thirteen and is enjoying being a star hockey player on her high school team. She has two good friends, Grace and Bree, who also play on her team. The three girls are looking forward to the upcoming high school hockey camp, which lasts three days. Roberts, the nearby high school hockey coach, runs the camp and uses it to pick new players for the varsity team, which has won three state championships. Riley idolizes the current team’s older star, Valentina, who is in her fourth and final year. She hopes she can be half as good as her.

Meanwhile, Riley’s Joy avatar in Riley’s brain guides Sadness, Anger, and Riley’s other emotions in cleaning out and deeply archiving all of Riley’s bad memories. Her actions help Riley develop a positive belief system about herself.

The night before the first day of hockey camp, some noises in the control room awaken Joy and Riley’s other emotions. They find some small workmen changing the control panel. Anger, fear and disgust start messing with the buttons on the new panel. At the same time, Riley wakes up very irritable with her mother. She is afraid of going to hockey camp and failing. Back at the control panel, Riley’s emotion avatars find the word Puberty written on the new control panel. They also discover that the new buttons are very sensitive and cause Riley to overreact to the slightest touch.

However, Riley manages to pull herself together and get to camp. Her mother and father bring Riley and her friends Bree and Grace to camp. However, in the backseat, Riley notices that something is wrong with her friends. Grace tells her the bad news: she and Bree are not going to the same high school where Coach Roberts leads the championship hockey team. Riley is of course very sad to hear the news, but she and her friends promise to remain good friends.

Back in the control room, Joy and the other Emotions are surprised to find the control room flooded with a host of new emotions, including fear, envy, boredom or boredom, and shame. Fear immediately begins to take over. She doesn’t like what Joy and the other emotions have done. She starts to worry Riley about not making the high school hockey team. As a result, Riley abandons her two friends and begins to focus all her attention on forming the team and becoming friends with Valentina.

Joy tries to take back control. However, Fear orders Embarrasment, a large hulking man in a hoodie, to force Joy, Anger, Sadness and Fear into a tube that banishes them to the outer regions of Riley’s brain. To make matters worse, Fear begins to move, locking away all of Riley’s good memories and sending back some of the bad memories Joy had stored in Riley’s unconscious. As a result, Anxiety begins to build a new belief system for Riley that begins to turn her into an anxiety-ridden human who can do whatever it takes to succeed in life.

Joy calls on her friends to find their way back to Riley’s brain control room and prevent Anxiety from causing more damage to Riley. But can they fix everything in time before Riley does something she regrets?

INSIDE OUT 2 is a great, family-friendly animated film. It is Pixar’s best film since 2019’s TOY STORY 4. That same year, Pixar owner Disney had seven of the Top 10 films in the United States and Canada, including the MOVIEGUIDE® Award-winning TOY STORY 4.

The good news is that unlike recent Disney and Pixar films, INSIDE OUT 2 isn’t woke or politically correct at all, at least as far as MOVIEGUIDE® can tell. INSIDE OUT 2 is delightful, funny, inventive and heartwarming. There are also many positive messages. For example, it promotes doing the right thing, keeping your emotions in check, and not letting your fears overcome your decision-making. Another great message is the film’s conclusion that it is not good for people to focus only on their good memories or only on their bad memories, as both can provide valuable lessons. Finally, several scenes promote repentance, forgiveness, humility, friendship and kindness. Don’t forget your old friends, even if you make new friends. The story has beautiful visual and non-visual ways of illustrating these messages and themes.

That said, while INSIDE OUT 2 contains a subplot about Riley developing a “belief system,” the film has no overt religious or redemptive content, other than a scene of repentance and forgiveness. The film’s story is therefore more psychological than metaphysical or philosophical. Still, the film’s messages about controlling our emotions and not letting one emotion overwhelm us have some biblical precedents. For example, Jesus says not to judge other people without first applying the same standard to yourself. He also commands us to make “righteous” judgments. Furthermore, Jesus often tells His listeners to “fear not” and not be anxious, but to trust Him and God’s provision. Fear and anxiety can lead us to God and can alert us to a threat or problem that we need to address, with the help of God and the Bible, of course. Self-control is also one of the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit, described by Paul in Galatians 5:22, 23. So righteous anger is not bad, but uncontrolled anger is.

MOVIEGUIDE® advises younger children to be careful due to dangerous scenes and a large scary-looking but non-threatening character called Deep Secrets. Fortunately, INSIDE OUT 2 is a wonderful return to form for Pixar and Disney.

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