The sequel to the Oscar-winning Zootopia finds its cop duo cracking a new mystery.
Rumors around a snake, unheard of in the mammalian metropolis, draw fresh fault lines.
The sequel feels too manicured to be consistently inventive.
There’s a lot to delight in Zootopia 2 just as there’s plentiful room to gripe about. Arriving almost a decade since the breakout predecessor, Jared Bush and Byron Howard’s animated adventure smugly rehashes thematic refrains. There’s the plea for inclusivity, celebration of difference, a rebuttal of prejudice. As the world tightens its borders, turns rigid definitions of who’s welcome, the mammalian metropolis of the Zootopia films, where various species co-exist, offers fantastical hope. The sequel widens the ambit. Now, reptiles have to be reckoned with, especially tidings of a snake that wreaks panic in the city.
Following the first film’s events, Judy (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick (Jason Bateman) may have emerged star cops. However, it’s clipped by their impulsive dashing into major missions despite their superior’s forbidding orders. The bunny-fox duo pulls off a smuggling expose but not without significant damages across the city. They face a fate of being separated as professional partners, but Judy suspects hidden truths behind the snake’s resurgence. Could bigger powers be covering up something?
Soon, Gary de’Snake (Ke Huy Quan) slithers down Judy’s defenses. A disputed journal of the influential Lynxley family, the city’s founders, may be holding the key to the mystery. Despite Nick’s hesitance, Judy is so determined to uncover what’s actually happening she plunges them both into high risk. New corners of the metropolis open up, as do its neighborhoods tucked away from mammalian gentrification. Nick and Judy are open-hearted, bound in mutual concern, even as one may not always agree with the other’s pursuits.
However, the cheerfully vibrant world tends to visually glaze. The scenery is too clogged with action and the need for spectacle. It’s a frequent shortcoming of many an animated film. The line between generous details in a particular world and grating excess is a dangerously thin one. When a film tries to pack in extravagant attractions every minute, it can get a lumbering affair instead of being crisply engaging. Zootopia 2 threatens to get muddled within sketchy outlines of mammalian circuses. An occasional joke, a smarting repartee zips through.
Fatigue clouds through the sequel’s visual exuberance. You want to be whisked away with the heroes, but their exploits are more tedious at times than filled with abandon. There’s a franchisification creeping at the edges, pushing for more expansion in an overeager scramble of a sequel. The linearity betrays the slew of adventures the film is keen on riffling. There’s no risk-taking, but an abundance of predictable design. This sequel leans more heavily into anthropomorphized psychology. There’s therapy talk involving Nick and Judy, whose pairing is posed as a greater menace to the city than them being its most vital saviors. Both expressly deal with private and mutually tussling issues. Or do they? Avoidance of the gulf yields, however, the path to their strongest reconciliation.
Zootopia 2 is disarming fun while it lasts, but promises no enduring value as its predecessor. You can see the mechanisms beneath the wonder, suss out a climactic twist from a mile. Familiar characters don’t surprise with new depths and new entrants flash past rather than stick themselves endearingly. Unexpected friendships are forged which are sweet and breezy but not the kind that make for classic intimacies.
Bateman remains the best thing about the sequel. Here’s an actor instantly sprucing up impish charm. Nick is street-smart, smooth-talking himself out of messy situations. He knows how to wheedle into a luxury private event. Bateman brings out Nick’s effortlessness, but the film traps him in banalities. The sequel zeroes in on communication gaps that can strike down the most seemingly sustaining partnerships. There’s a running joke about Nick’s emotional insecurity, his jokey self a disguise for reticence about childhood trauma. Judy is a sharp opposite, driven by idealism to do whatever she can in fixing a ruptured world. Unlike his pragmatic impulses, she’ll not stop until justice is served. It takes both to extreme circumstances. While Judy insists on fighting for the innocent snake’s rights, Nick is fueled by survival instincts. The film siphons drama off the duo’s clashing attitudes to how far they can go in a particular situation. Nick fears losing her if they continue further and as the city’s heavyweights mob up against them.
For all the trepidation around reptiles, disavowal of difference is the operative thing. Yet Zootopia 2 keeps it sanitized and defanged, the hoopla around difference whittling away into mere verbiage. The makers club together disparate species without jousting with specific ramifications of what the dissimilarities poke through. Zootopia 2 is too coy and precious about this, thereby taking any sharper edge off previously established quandaries around tolerance.
