As Riley heads towards the dreaded teenage years, her emotions are about to get a bit of a shock as some new ones appear and rock everything to the core.
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After some tough times the emotions of Riley, led by Joy have managed to help her have everything under control and become a very good and nice person. With two best friends, close relationships with both her parents and a talent and love for ice hockey. As Riley is invited to attend a hockey camp over the weekend with the coach she wants to play for at High School, everything is going to go rather crazy as the puberty button begins to go off and the emotions have no clue what to do. Led by Anxiety the new emotions are hard to handle!
The combination of the puberty alarm along with Riley finding out on the way to camp that her friends Grace and Bree aren’t actually going to the same High School push Anxiety to the limit, especially when she takes over from Joy in controlling everything. I thought that was a very clever way of taking the story in that direction. We can all massively relate to Anxiety just suddenly hitting hard and not being sure how to deal with that.
The friendship choices for Riley was certainly something that is very difficult as you approach the teen years and always wanting to fit in. That includes lying about what you like and dislike to be accepted, again something we can all relate to or a slight warning for anyone around the same age as Riley watching the film.
It was certainly a very good follow up to Inside Out and despite the release being 9 years later, we are only 2 years later in terms of the story. I mean a little crazy that it was 2015 when the first film came out. It leaves everything wide open for more, but along with Anxiety we have Embarrassment, Envy and Ennui. It reminds us all that as much as we try, at times we just cannot control our emotions and might just have to let them play out whether that is good, bad or indifferent.