God is amazing, and Inside Out 2 proves it.  He created us as complex individuals, and Disney has done a masterful job of imagining how this intricate body of ours works on an emotional level.  Of course, there is no hint of the role of the Divine in the film.  One little bugaboo I would offer on the proceedings is that the changes that happen inside of Riley Andersen’s (voiced by Kensington Tallman) head occur seemingly at random.  For us who believe, we know that there is One main cause for it all.  Some might find that to be too convenient of an answer, or an over simplification, but I find it comforting knowing that there is Somebody beyond little old me.  To tie this already dense introduction to what brought me to the theater for this film, aside from a sense of duty to The Legionnaire, is how I recalled when I saw the original Inside Out (2015).  I was dating a woman I thought I was going to marry, and I brought that emotional baggage with me into the cinema.  If that is not an appropriate segue into the rest of Inside Out 2, then nothing is.  Still, the idea I would like to keep at the forefront of your own mind as you read on is how amazing is God that He made us as He did.

One gift that God gave Riley when He created her is her ability to play hockey at a high level, and it is with her playing that sport that Inside Out 2 begins.  In her brain and cheering her on is the avatars of all her emotions, with Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) being the main one at the controls.  The others make their contributions too, showing that they have developed a good working relationship, though they will be introduced as needed.  So many emotions!  As Riley’s team, on which are two of her best friends, Bree (voiced by Sumayyah Nuriddan-Green) and Grace (voiced by Grace Lu), is tied with their opponents, her and Grace employ a tactic to come up with the game winning goal.  Their performance earns them the invite of a high school hockey coach, Coach Roberts (voiced by Yvette Nicole Brown), to a camp she is holding for talented female players.  Bree, Grace, and Riley are all excited to go, especially Riley, as she sees this as an opportunity to play at a higher level.  A funny thing, though, takes place in the middle of the night before they are to go off for a weekend on the rink: Riley hits puberty.  As Joy and the others are awakened by other brain cells coming in to do some reconstruction inside of the command center, they are greeted by a number of new emotions, primary among which is Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke).  At first, Anxiety expresses excitement (perhaps a bit too much) over meeting the primary emotion who has been controlling Riley for so long.  However, once the first-timers have all gotten settled, differences arise between Anxiety and Joy as to how situations with Riley should be handled.  It starts with the car ride to camp when Bree and Grace inform Riley that they will be going to a different high school than her.  Before Riley has time to process this development, they arrive at their destination and she spots Valentina “Val” Ortiz (voiced by Lilimar), a legendary hockey player on the varsity team at the high school Riley will be attending.  Seeing Bree and Grace off to the side, Riley allows herself to be taken in by Val’s warm greeting as they head to the locker room.  For Anxiety, the final test comes when Riley is singled out by Coach Roberts for goofing off with Bree and Grace, forcing the campers to have to do extra skating.  This proves to Anxiety that Joy and the older emotions are incapable of helping Riley through this transitioning period in the young girl’s life.  Anxiety is also prepared for this moment, carting Joy and the rest to a vault in Riley’s memory to be locked away for possible future use.  This leaves Anxiety to re-make Riley’s identity into what this new emotion thinks the budding hockey player should be.  Meanwhile, Joy and the others get some help from other secrets Riley has hidden inside her mind to escape.  Joy can see what Anxiety is trying to accomplish, and believes that only by retrieving Riley’s old identity, which Anxiety cast to the back of the girl’s brain, can this perceived hostile takeover be prevented.  At the same time, Joy senses a need to have someone inside the control center to bring them back when they locate the old identity.  The emotion picked to stay behind is Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith), who is aided by newcomer Embarrassment (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser).  Meanwhile, with Anxiety in charge, Riley distances herself from Bree and Grace, seeing Val and the older players as a pathway to athletic and social success.  In the course of Joy’s travels, her party comes across a part of Riley’s imagination where Anxiety has brain cells imagining all sorts of possible scenarios that bring nothing but stress to Riley.  This comes to a head on the last night of the camp when Val reminisces about when she had been in Riley’s place, scoring two goals in the final scrimmage and only barely making the team.  Because being on the varsity squad as a freshman has become an obsession, Riley sneaks into Coach Roberts’ office to see what has been noticed about Riley’s skills.  The report states that Riley is not ready.  This puts Anxiety into a frenzy, especially as Riley is about to get on the rink and a voice rings in her head saying that she is not good enough.  Anxiety pushes Riley to play extra hard to the detriment everyone else on the ice, including Grace, who Riley barely notices when she crashes into her best friend.  Coach Roberts sends Riley to the penalty box where the girl begins experiencing an Anxiety fueled meltdown.  This is when Joy and the others finally get there, arriving to a whirlwind of Anxiety at the controls.  Joy tries to replace the identity created by Anxiety with Riley’s former, more Joy centered one, but that only has partial success.  Instead, seeing Anxiety’s state, Joy realizes that neither of them should decide how Riley should be.  This allows Riley to finally settle down, creating a new outlook, and calling Joy back to the controls.  We close with a montage of Riley headed into high school with a new group of emotions learning to work together for her benefit, but with Joy once more in the lead.

I appreciate that Joy is the primary emotion at the end of Inside Out 2 because it is something that God wants for us.  This is an important message, one that needs to be explored a little more instead of me blabbing about any technical aspects of the film that I noticed.  The fact that God desires us to be joyful does not invalidate the other feelings.  You should feel anger, fear, or anything else that He put into us when He formed us with His hands, instilling in us such a myriad of emotions that make us human.  It is a complexity that one can only speculate at, which is part of the genius of the movie.  At the same time, it cannot go unnoticed that it is a little disappointing that these feelings seemingly pop up and operate at random.  God designed us to have these things for a purpose, but this being Disney (and our modern culture in general), we are not likely to get a Divine reason for what is happening.  That is why you have The Legionnaire.  Interestingly, it is Anxiety that I would say comes closest to giving a Higher Purpose behind our actions, but also completely misses the mark.  God gave us the ability to plan, which is what Anxiety does and is a great adaptation when used properly.  Indeed, all our emotions are appropriate in the right context.  The constant refrain in the Book of Ecclesiastes, for example, is that there is a time and a season for everything “under the sun.”  That means puberty, too.  Thus, when it does come, it is without any real motivation for the story.  Of course, it is hard for us to know why this period commences when it does.  These are things only God understands, which is why I do not intend this as a criticism.  Instead, perhaps you can use it with your young one when this time of her or his life rolls around, and you can say that it is just part of God’s design.  It may be tough and anxiety inducing, but that, too, is cause for joy.

The onset of puberty, as in Inside Out 2 and our own lives, relates to change.  This is also a part of God’s ultimate plan for us, and another mysterious aspect of it.  It is something I reflected on a great deal as indicated in the introduction.  It is clear that Riley wants to be a hockey player, but the movie also suggests that there could be other professions that could be pursued in the future.  When I was her age (roughly), all I thought about was playing baseball.  Circumstances, though, can radically alter how we view things, and we need to be open to them as signs of God nudging us onto the path He wants us to follow.  This is why I was reminded of when I viewed Inside Out.  At that time, you would not have been able to convince me that I would have any other outcome than marrying my then girlfriend.  A little over a year later, we broke up.  Inside Out 2 does a great job of highlighting another part of the genius of how God made us, and that is learning to incorporate these changing and developing emotions as we age through what God brings us, like the end of a relationship.  1 Corinthians 13:11 speaks to these transitions from experiencing life and God as a child to an adult.  I believe verse twelve explains it better in talking about learning to see things more clearly.  Sometimes it takes traumatic events like potentially losing your best friends or not making the hockey team, as with Riley, for us to have growth.  As discussed in the last paragraph, for her that leads to a recommitment to that God-given joy to which we are all called. This does not happen in the same way for all of us, but I pray it eventually brings you to Him.

I have already made this review of Inside Out 2 longer than most, but as the last two paragraphs probably indicate, it had me feeling more reflective than usual.  This does not typically happen for me while watching Disney movies.  The fact that it had me in tears should speak volumes as to my recommendation of it.