The wholesome Pixar family film Inside Out 2 and the raunchy Netflix comedy Big Mouth take fundamentally different approaches to looking inside the minds of middle-schoolers, but their anxiety plotlines are remarkably similar in the broad details, and both on the same wavelength when it comes to dealing with the problem. Big Mouth pairs mature discussions about mental health with huge servings of dick jokes, while Inside Out 2 takes an entirely sexless view of the changes hormones bring. But both animated projects eventually get to the same message about how anxiety is a powerful, tumultuous force that can never be banished, but can be managed with a little help from friends.
Which one wore the same plot better? Here’s a breakdown of how the two tonally different stories handle the same beats — and how they form an unlikely double feature for adults and teens figuring out how to cope with anxiety.
[Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Big Mouth season 4 and Inside Out 2.]
Inside Out 2 vs. Big Mouth: What does anxiety feel like?
The parallels between the two stories are striking. Inside Out 2’s Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and Big Mouth’s Tito the Anxiety Mosquito (Maria Bamford) both manifest for the first time to plague their respective kid victims at summer camp. That happens in part because both of those kids are feeling insecure in their relationships with their best friends. Riley (Kensington Tallman) has just learned she and her besties will be going to different high schools, and she’s defensively pulling back from their friendship. Similarly, Nick Birch (Nick Kroll) is estranged from his closest friend Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney) after a huge fight over Nick kissing Andrew’s ex-girlfriend.
Tito the Anxiety Mosquito shows up in the season 4 premiere of Big Mouth, a new addition to the show’s rogues’ gallery of emotions like Depression Kitty and the Shame Wizard. (Shame was considered as a new emotion for Inside Out 2, but didn’t make the cut.) “I’m the worst, but so are you,” Tito says as an introduction, after biting Nick.
Like so many modern Disney movies, the Inside Out series doesn’t really have villains, but Anxiety acts as an antagonist, facing off against the first film’s emotion characters. Joy (Amy Poehler) typically sits at the center of the emotional console controlling Riley, and thinks of herself as the hero of the story. While she learned to give space to Sadness (Phyllis Smith) in the first film, she’s reluctant to do the same for Anxiety and Riley’s other new emotions, and she pushes Riley to goof off with her best friends from school, even when she would be better served by paying attention to what the hockey camp’s coach is saying.
Inside Out 2’s approach here is stronger, because it acknowledges that anxiety can be advantageous if it helps you take useful actions — like Anxiety suggesting Riley study for her Spanish test at the end of the film. But it also acknowledges that anxiety can easily spiral into harmful catastrophic thinking. Tito is obviously malicious in her exaggerated warnings to Nick, like “You’re going to die a virgin as the world explodes from global warming.” But Anxiety seems to genuinely believe she’s helping Riley by keeping her up all night to imagine equally catastrophic scenarios. Her breakdown as she drives Riley to a panic attack is a beautiful visualization of the feeling of being out of control, and the ominous swarm of buzzing anxieties Tito conjures for Nick don’t quite have the same story power.
Inside Out 2 vs. Big Mouth: What does anxiety make you do?
In both stories, anxiety attacks the teen’s sense of self and further damages their relationship with their closest friends. Nick is rattled by Andrew telling him he isn’t a good person. Rather than making amends, he decides he can ignore Andrew and hang out with his camp best friend, Seth Goldberg (Seth Rogen). Those plans don’t work out, as Andrew and Seth bond, with Nick being left out. Nick is so fixated on this relationship that he ignores his other good friend, Jessi Glaser (Jessi Klein), and even lashes out at her when she tries to help him through a panic attack.
Anxiety more literally attacks Riley’s sense of self, dumping it and the main emotions from Inside Out so that she can fully take over. Riley pushes away her best friends, Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green) and Grace (Grace Lu), because she feels she might as well cut her losses and focus on making new friends.
She continues to deny her true self at a social gathering, disavowing her favorite band because the older girls she’s trying to impress find it juvenile. When Anxiety haunts her nightmares, Riley is less afraid that she hurt her friends’ feelings, and more concerned that they’ll perform better than her in camp’s final hockey game, and she’ll look foolish for not having joined their team. Her core belief that she’s a good person quickly gives way to a new self, built around the idea “I’m not good enough.”
Both arcs show the cruelty of anxiety, but Big Mouth pushes the topic further, especially around the idea of physical self esteem at the onset of puberty. Riley is briefly concerned about changing clothes in front of other girls in the hockey camp’s locker room, but the topic never surfaces again, as she fixates on her goal of impressing the coach enough to make the high-school hockey team. That’s understandable for a kids’ movie — but body-image issues are front and central in Big Mouth, where Nick’s insecurities over the size of his penis lead him to avoid showering for days, simmering in a growing stench that eventually earns him the nickname “Soup.” This is the show that had Maya Rudolph sing an entire song about the diversity of bodies on display on a trip to a Korean spa in season 2.
Big Mouth dwells far more on just how cruel kids can be, with even the weird kid who’s previously served as the punching bag for most of the camp’s boys quickly taking the opportunity to raise his status by making fun of Nick. By contrast, the girls Riley meets at camp accept her quickly — maybe even unrealistically quickly. That lack of external conflict helps emphasize Riley’s internal turmoil, and the movie still shows off anxiety’s destructive power. But Big Mouth presents the better portrait of its lasting consequences.
Inside Out 2 vs. Big Mouth: How do you fight anxiety?
In both cases, these crises reach a breaking point where the characters have a panic attack and their best friends bring them back from the edge. Inside Out 2 provides a beautiful moment of catharsis, with Bree, Grace, and Riley taking the ice together for the camp’s big final hockey game, as Joy mans the console of Riley’s mind. It’s a rebuttal of Joy’s fears that she’ll have less impact on Riley’s life as she grows up — that final game demonstrates how valuable Joy still is.
Unsurprisingly, Big Mouth’s climax is much more disgusting. Nick and Andrew reconcile while Andrew passes a bowel movement he’s been holding in all summer, and The Pretenders’ “I’ll Stand By You” plays. It lacks Inside Out 2’s tight narrative, leaning on shock value and the general feeling that the boys had to make up because they’re the only people who would fully put up with each other.
Both Nick and Riley end their summers in better places than they began, able to accept some of their shortcomings with the help of supportive friends. Even so, their anxieties can never be truly banished. Nick is relieved to be rid of Tito, but the episode ominously ends with a swarm of mosquitoes following the bus home. Tito has continued to be a recurring antagonist throughout the series, now headed for an eighth and final season on Netflix: She continues plaguing Nick, Jessi, and other characters. She’s been most successfully battled with the help of the Gratitoad (Zach Galifianakis), who urges people to appreciate their friends and the other good things in their lives.
The jagged tree of self-loathing Anxiety built inside Riley’s mind persists as part of her more complex sense of self. Anxiety needs to be constantly managed by the rest of Riley’s emotions, who encourage her to relax with tea and a massage chair. The ending of the film is a bit of a cop-out, as Riley seems to have gotten good news about joining the high-school hockey team, while a far more compelling finale would show she’s grown up enough to be able to accept failure and keep working toward her future. But with another movie in the series almost guaranteed, based on Inside Out 2’s huge box-office success, the series will have more opportunities to show how Anxiety continues to impact Riley and her development as a person.
All seven seasons of Big Mouth are streaming on Netflix. Inside Out 2 is in theaters now.
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