When an alarm signifying Riley’s puberty starts going off, the control room is suddenly thrown into chaos. First, a construction crew arrives unannounced and begins smashing things up. Then, a whole new slew of emotions set up shop. There’s the very bored, and very French, Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), the bashful Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser), the clingy Envy (Ayo Edebiri), and the leader of this new group, the extremely nervous but eager-to-please Anxiety (Maya Hawke). Joy assumes they’ll all have to work together, but Anxiety has other plans.
Hawke has perhaps the trickiest role in the entire film, as a lesser script (and performance) could’ve easily turned Anxiety into a villain — indeed, some of the things the character does are borderline villainous. But the writing (by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein) and Hawke’s gentle-but-firm voice work make us understand where Anxiety is coming from, even if we don’t condone all of her actions.
As for Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman), these new emotions are tearing her apart. The teen has gone away to hockey camp with her two best friends Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu). But when Riley befriends cool high school hockey captain Val (Lilimar), Anxiety sees this as an opportunity to push Riley’s old friends aside and make room for Val and Val’s high school buddies. All of this plays hell with Riley’s sense of self, and it’s up to Joy and the original team to try to find a way to set things right before Riley has a complete emotional breakdown.
