I’ve been wanting to write about Inside Out 2 ever since my family saw the movie this summer.
Overall, I thought the film was excellent. It picks up a few years after the first Inside Out movie, focusing on the rollercoaster of Riley’s emotions as she navigates the teen years. After watching the movie, I learned that during production, the filmmakers worked with a group of teenage girls, nicknamed “Riley’s Crew.” The group gave regular feedback on the main character, helping the filmmakers ensure she was represented accurately. And Riley feels like an authentic 13-year-old — vulnerable and scared in one moment, and full of energy and optimism in the next.
One emotion that’s portrayed especially well in the movie is anxiety. The physical depiction of Riley’s panic attack coupled with scenes of the emotion, Anxiety, desperately trying to hold on to control, was stunning and heartbreaking. This scene made me think about how many of us struggle with anxiety, and how uncertainty about an outcome is at the root of this fear.
Despite its masterful portrayal of teenage challenges, I still think the film missed an opportunity with a topic that’s often a minefield for adolescent girls: the pressure to perform academically.
As the film begins, we hear Riley’s lead emotion, Joy, report cheerily that Riley is graduating from middle school “at the top of her class.” I cringed a bit as I watched Riley receiving an award as her parents cheered from the audience.
My daughters, ages 13 and 15, both worry about performing well in school, and they’re not alone. A 2023 research review highlighted that “academic pressures and the desire to succeed in school in combination with an increasingly ‘risky’ world characterized by a precarious labour market can have an especially damaging effect on girls’ emotional states.”
Growing up in a family that valued academic success, I’ve always struggled with perfectionism. And despite my desire not to pressure my kids, when my oldest entered high school, the emphasis on grades ramped up so intensely it became impossible to ignore. I found myself slipping into some bad habits, from checking her online portal far too often to trying to exert control over her homework and study habits. (No surprise: My well-intentioned nagging didn’t help and actually made things so much worse. That’s why this year, I’m trying to take a step back.)
In her book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It, Jennifer Breheny Wallace writes, “our kids are absorbing the idea that their worth is contingent on their performance—their GPA, the number of social media followers they have, their college brands—not for who they are deep at their core. They feel they only matter to the adults in their lives, their peers, the larger community, if they are successful.”
Inside Out 2 revolves around Riley’s desire to make the high school varsity hockey team, so her grades aren’t the focus of the film. But as the movie concludes, Riley is a freshman in high school, and again we learn that she’s at the top of her class, in addition to being an aspiring varsity athlete.
Recognizing that adolescent girls today are experiencing increased stress about academic performance, I wish the film had made mention of the fact that merely adjusting to a high school course load is no easy feat. Throw in a commitment to a varsity sport, and some (if not most) teens might feel completely overwhelmed.
Certainly, academic achievement is commendable. The feelings of pride and competence that come from giving effort and mastering subject matter are wonderful. But getting straight A’s isn’t the norm for every student — nor is it the only path to a successful, meaningful life. To quote SNL legend Chris Farley, portraying “motivational speaker” Matt Foley, a lot of parents worry that if our kids don’t pull a 4.0 GPA, take all the AP classes, outshine their peers in multiple extracurriculars, and go straight to an Ivy League school, they’ll be doomed to a pathetic existence “living in a van down by the river.” There’s simply no room for a middle ground, one in which you don’t excel at everything you try.
I think Inside Out 2 could have been even more compelling if Riley had been described as a hardworking kid, but one who wasn’t necessarily in the top percentile of her class. In fact, there’s one scene when Riley is handed back an assignment with a poor grade. The movie could have explored what she learned from this — and showed that she was still able to accept herself and move on. I sorely wanted to hear the messages that are often lacking in a lot of school districts: that sometimes you can try really hard and still not get an A, and that there are ways to differentiate yourself that have nothing to do with grades.
Now I will relent and say this: I realize there’s only so much subject matter you can cover in a roughly 90-minute movie. Still, a recovering perfectionist can dream.
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