Inside Out 2

Description

Inside Out 2 picks up two years after the original film, with Riley now entering high school. Her emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust—oversee a newly formed element of Riley’s mind called her “Sense of Self,” which houses memories and feelings that shape her beliefs. Joy, aiming to fill the Sense of Self with only good memories, has created a mechanism that launches bad memories to the back of Riley’s mind. Riley and her best friends, Bree and Grace, are invited to a three-day ice hockey camp, where Riley hopes to qualify for her new school’s team, the Fire Hawks. In her mind, a “puberty alarm” goes off the night before camp, and several workers upgrade the emotion console, leaving Headquarters in disarray. The emotions find that Riley now overreacts to any inputs they make to the console. Four new emotions—Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui—arrive and clash with the original emotions over their approaches. In particular, Joy wants Riley to have fun at camp, while Anxiety focuses on winning a spot on the team and making new friends, especially after Riley learns that Bree and Grace will be attending a different high school. Under Joy’s control, Riley inadvertently gets the campers in trouble by the strict camp director, Coach Roberts. Anxiety, deciding that Riley needs to change to fit in with the older players, launches the Sense of Self to the back of the mind and has the old emotions bottled up and thrown into a memory vault. The new emotions then create a new anxiety-dominated Sense of Self and encourage Riley to befriend popular hockey player Valentina “Val” Ortiz, straining her friendship with Bree and Grace. The original emotions escape the vault; while the others go to retrieve Riley’s old Sense of Self, Sadness returns to Headquarters to prepare to bring them back via a recall tube. Sadness is discovered by Embarrassment, who reluctantly helps her remain hidden, eventually helping her out. Under Anxiety’s control, Riley sneaks into Coach Roberts’ office and learns from her notebook that Riley is not considered ready yet to become a Fire Hawk. The four original emotions find the old Sense of Self on a mountain of bad memories deposited by Joy’s mechanism. Unable to use the recall tube as planned due to Anxiety destroying it, they cause an avalanche of memories to return them to Headquarters, causing the memories to spill into Riley’s Belief System. Anxiety realizes that the Sense of Self she has created for Riley is one of self-doubt and inferiority, which causes Riley to perform poorly during her final tryout match, accidentally hurt Grace, and get sent to the penalty box. Panicked, Anxiety frantically swarms the console in a blinding tornado that leads to Riley having an anxiety attack. Returning to Headquarters, Joy finds Anxiety still in control but distressed; Joy convinces her that Riley doesn’t need to change to have a better future. Anxiety relents and Joy reinstates Riley’s original Sense of Self, but the panic attack persists. After Anxiety admits that she cannot determine who Riley is, Joy realizes that the same applies to her. Joy removes the first Sense of Self and allows a new one to form from both Riley’s good and bad memories. The emotions embrace this third self, calming Riley and helping her reconcile with Bree and Grace. The console calls for Joy, who takes command and helps Riley happily finish the hockey tryouts. Riley befriends Val and the other Fire Hawks at high school, while maintaining her friendship with Bree and Grace. Living in peace, the nine emotions work together to protect Riley, as she happily checks her phone for the Fire Hawks’ recruitment results.