THE STORY – Detectives Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde find themselves on the twisting trail of a mysterious reptile who turns the mammal metropolis of Zootopia upside down. Testing their growing partnership like never before, they go undercover in new parts of town to crack the case.
THE CAST – Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Shakira, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Patrick Warburton & Quinta Brunson
THE TEAM – Jared Bush (Director/Writer) & Byron Howard (Director)
THE RUNNING TIME – 108 Minutes
Every time Walt Disney Studios seems down for the count, they always come roaring back to life. It’s easy to be hard on the company, as their continued attempts at cannibalizing their own legacy reap fewer and fewer rewards (“Snow White,” “Lilo & Stitch“) and their once-infallible animation division has seemed adrift, unsure of what direction to take (“Wish“) or even what storytelling model they’re supposed to be following (“Moana 2“). All it takes is one good film to erase the memory of lots of bad ones, though, and the Mouse House has a pretty great one on its hands with “Zootopia 2,“ the sequel to the 2016 Oscar winner about a metropolis in which mammals large and small, predator and prey, live together in perfect harmony. The film’s richly detailed, thoughtfully constructed world allowed for some sneakily subversive storytelling, bringing together pointed political satire and wildly clever visual gags to tell a story about racism in a perfectly kid-friendly way. The way things have been going in recent years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “Zootopia 2“ would be just another quick, lazy cash grab, but that’s not the case. Hats off to returning co-director Byron Howard and returning screenwriter Jared Bush (here also serving as co-director), because while the film’s plot may follow the template of the first film almost beat for beat, “Zootopia 2“ makes such good use of the original’s structure to tell a similar but deeper story that it looks easy, even though we know from experience that it’s anything but.
In “Zootopia,“ the city’s first bunny police officer, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), learned that all was not right underneath the city’s gleaming surface, and it took teaming up with a red fox con man named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to expose the corruption that was threatening to divide predator and prey permanently. Now, Judy and Nick are partners on the Zootopia police force, but the bias Judy experienced as a bunny in a force full of larger animals hasn’t gone away. She’s still desperate to prove that she and Nick belong there just as much as razorback Captain Hoggbottom (Michelle Gomez) or the pair of zebras lovingly referred to (by themselves) as “the zebros“ (wrestlers Roman Reigns and CM Punk). When Judy and Nick’s bust of a customs agent smuggling illegal goods into Zootopia goes awry, Police Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) threatens to break them up unless they can complete a class on becoming better partners.
All the brilliant visual gags and whipsmart wordplay that defined the first film are on full display in this opening sequence, with plenty of cleverly constructed references to the animals’ basic instincts that never fail to get a laugh. Seemingly, no bit of animal wordplay goes unspoken, no matter how obvious, but Bush’s screenplay sets up every joke so well that it’s hard not to laugh at them. Even if the punchline elicits a groan, you’ll smile through it, laughing at yourself a little for being so easily amused.
Even though she loves to follow orders, Judy can’t stop thinking about the snake scales she found on the bust. Snakes have been banished from Zootopia following a murder many years ago, and most other reptiles have long since gone underground. Judy can’t help but be on the lookout, and sure enough, on the night of Zootopia’s Zootennial Gala, a snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan) breaks in and steals the journal of Ebeneezer Lynxley, who designed the weather walls that keep Zootopia perfectly climate-controlled. When Judy catches him, though, Gary tells her that he needs the journal to help his family come back home, throwing Judy for a loop. Before she knows it, she and Nick are on the run from the ZPD, linking up with beaver conspiracy theorist Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster) in an attempt to find Gary and figure out what the Lynxley journal could possibly have to do with why snakes were exiled from Zootopia.
The expansion of the world gives the team of animators even more space to let their imaginations run wild, and the inventiveness that defined the production design of the first film is on full display. Spending more time in Tundra Town for the Zootennial Gala is quite fun (don’t lick the poles!), but the standout is the new area of Marsh Market. With a clever new amphibious design detail and personality-filled character around seemingly every corner, the area is full of the eye-poppingly beautiful, lovingly detailed animation that has defined the Disney brand for decades. If all “Zootopia 2“ had to offer was this one new area of the city, it would be enough. Every frame is bursting with creativity, begging you to pause and take it all in. Who knows what such wonders await in the new neighborhoods we’ll see in the inevitable third film?
Disney producing a beautifully animated film full of cute anthropomorphic animals may not be much of a surprise, but the quality of the screenplay is. In the first film, Nick opened Judy’s eyes to the rot growing in the middle of what she thought was a paradise, while she opened his to the fact that caring about others besides yourself doesn’t have to be a weakness. The sequel takes the same approach as the first film, but bigger, and has Judy and Nick learning together about the rot that Zootopia was founded on, while continuing to work through their insecurities from the first film. Despite having similar character arcs, the film never feels like a rehash, in part because of how it acknowledges that personal improvement doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time and effort, and probably a few stops and starts. This dovetails quite nicely with the film’s ultimate message that embracing what makes each of us unique will make us all better collectively. That’s not exactly an uncommon message for a family film, but the journey “Zootopia 2“ takes to arrive there does an impressive job of threading a particularly fine needle.
Not only does the film take on incredibly complex real-world issues (xenophobia, displacement) and distill them down to an essence so simple that children will understand, but it does so without alienating half its audience. In addition, it includes some of the most childish jokes you’ll see in a film this year, sets them up so cleverly, and pulls them off with such panache that audiences of all ages will laugh hysterically. Not only has Disney made a sequel that matches the original in quality, but they have let the project’s ambition extend to its thematic storytelling as well as its technical elements, and, against all odds, Bush and Howard came out on top. “Zootopia 2“ is a marvel of modern animated storytelling, a family film that really will have everyone in the family laughing, singing (in the case of the earworm “Zoo,“ sung by Shakira’s Zootopian pop star Gazelle), and perhaps even crying together.
