amy poehler

While Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, subtitled How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, soars on Best Seller lists, Pixar animation captures the angst with Inside Out 2. Pixar’s follow-up to the 2015 family flick about talking emotions centers on 13 year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman), teetering on the cusp of puberty. Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui (the French word that combines the feeling of tiredness & boredom) join the core emotions from the previous film: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Joy, and Sadness.

Who would imagine that the thoughts keeping us up at night come from a wired orange Muppet who means well? Yet after watching Inside Out 2, it’s hard to picture Anxiety any other way. It’s been nine years since Disney/Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated feature Inside Out introduced viewers to the cutely complex emotional landscape inside the mind of a tween girl named Riley. Like its predecessor, Inside Out 2 provides some emotional tools inside an entertaining and relatable package. We all contain multitudes, and balancing these is how we grow.

It’s been 10 years since Pixar ventured into the mind of a young girl who was depressed about leaving her friends and moving from Minnesota to San Francisco, but it’s only been two years in the life of Riley. She’s 13 and seems to be happy, doing well in school and playing hockey with her two best friends. Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness have kept Riley’s “head” quarters running smoothly, but when Anxiety and her 3 E crew of Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment show up, cranium chaos ensues.