Inside Out 2
IMDb Rating
190K+
IMDb Votes
91%
Rotten Tomatoes
$1.7B
Box Office
Synopsis & Review
Riley Andersen is thirteen now, and puberty arrives at Headquarters with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust — the five emotions who steered Riley safely through childhood — wake up one morning to find a demolition crew tearing into the comfortable control panel they've operated for years. Construction is underway to make room for new arrivals: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and a perpetually unimpressed teenager named Ennui. Anxiety, brimming with frantic good intentions, quickly seizes control, convinced that the only way to protect Riley from an uncertain future is to plan for every conceivable disaster before it happens. She exiles Joy and the original emotions to the dusty Back of the Mind and sets about constructing an entirely new "sense of self" for Riley — one built not on who she actually is, but on who Anxiety believes she needs to become to survive an intense weekend at high school hockey camp.
Pixar built its reputation on stories that take an abstract internal experience and render it as something a child can point at and a parent can feel in their chest, and Inside Out 2 may be the studio's purest distillation of that formula since the original film nine years earlier. Director Kelsey Mann, stepping into Pete Docter's chair for the first time, resists the temptation to simply repeat the first film's structure; instead, he and screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein use the expanded emotional cast to dramatize something genuinely difficult to put into words — the specific, suffocating logic of an anxious mind that means well and still does harm. Maya Hawke's vocal performance as Anxiety is the film's anchor, equal parts manic comic energy and quietly devastating sincerity, and the film's climactic panic-attack sequence — rendered as a literal storm tearing through Riley's psyche — is among the most striking pieces of emotional filmmaking Pixar has produced. It broke opening-weekend records for an animated film and became the first animated movie in history to cross a billion dollars worldwide, but the achievement that matters more is how precisely it understands its subject.
Why Watch This Movie?
The Most Successful Animated Film Ever Made
Inside Out 2 didn't just top the 2024 box office — it became the highest-grossing animated film in history, surpassing Frozen II's longstanding record within weeks of release. That kind of consensus from young kids, teenagers, and adults simultaneously is exceptionally rare, and it happened because the film speaks to something true rather than chasing nostalgia.
Anxiety Is One of Pixar's Best New Characters in Years
Maya Hawke voices a character who could easily have been written as a simple antagonist, and instead becomes the film's most sympathetic figure. Anxiety isn't evil — she's exhausted, overcommitted, and certain that catastrophizing is the same thing as caring. Watching Joy slowly realize that Anxiety isn't the enemy, just an emotion working from bad information, is the film's quiet emotional masterstroke.
It Treats Adolescent Mental Health With Real Specificity
Rather than offering a tidy lesson about "managing your feelings," the film dramatizes the actual mechanics of an anxiety spiral — the way it builds a false narrative, recruits other emotions into its cause, and convinces the person experiencing it that vigilance is safety. Therapists and parents alike have pointed to specific sequences as some of the most accurate depictions of adolescent anxiety put on screen.
A Visual and Sonic Upgrade Across the Board
From the kinetic chaos of the "Sar-Chasm" to Andrea Datzman's score, every technical department raises its game. The character designs for the new emotions are immediately iconic, and the film's color language shifts noticeably as Riley's sense of self begins to fracture — subtle work that rewards a second viewing.
Cast & Crew
Director
Kelsey Mann
Screenplay
Meg LeFauve & Dave Holstein
Studio
Pixar / Walt Disney Pictures
Joy
Amy Poehler
Anxiety
Maya Hawke
Sadness
Phyllis Smith
Riley
Kensington Tallman
Original Score
Andrea Datzman
Official Trailer
© Walt Disney Pictures / Pixar Animation Studios. Trailer embedded via YouTube.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to watch the first Inside Out before this one?
Yes, strongly recommended. Inside Out 2 picks up directly where the 2015 original left off and assumes familiarity with Riley's core emotions, her established personality "Islands," and the basic rules of how Headquarters and long-term memory work. None of that is re-explained in detail, so newcomers may find some of the emotional stakes land less effectively without the first film's setup.
Why do some emotions have different voice actors in the sequel?
Bill Hader (Fear) and Mindy Kaling (Disgust) did not return for the sequel due to scheduling conflicts; Tony Hale and Liza Lapira stepped into the roles instead. Both newcomers were directed to preserve the original vocal rhythm and comic timing of their characters rather than reinvent them, which is why the transition feels relatively seamless on screen.
Is Inside Out 2 appropriate for young children given its anxiety themes?
The film is rated PG, and Pixar designed its anxiety sequences to be emotionally honest rather than frightening for frightening's sake — there's no horror imagery, just heightened metaphor. That said, some very young or anxiety-prone children may find the panic-attack sequence intense, and several child psychologists have suggested it's a strong conversation-starter for kids around age seven and up, watched together with a parent.
Will there be an Inside Out 3?
Pixar and Disney have not made an official announcement, but given Inside Out 2's record-breaking box office performance, a third installment is widely considered a near-certainty within the industry. Director Kelsey Mann has spoken publicly about additional emotions and life stages the franchise could still explore, though no script or release window has been confirmed.
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