‘Zootopia 2’ Review: The Fast and the Furriest [B-]

During our precarious social moment in America—where wealth inequality continues to skyrocket, federal police forces are taking to the streets to strip vulnerable people of basic rights, and our relationship to both government and the controllers of business and capital slides ever closer to the sort of dystopias usually reserved for science fiction—a new Zootopia movie feels simultaneously apt and potentially ill-advised.

Those familiar with the first Zootopia, released back in 2016 on the eve of Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president, will remember its basic ethos: a slaphappy, bouncy, colorful children’s movie set in an animal metropolis built around conspicuous parallels to our society’s own prejudice and oppression. You may also remember that even as a simple animals-as-people allegory meant for kids, it came off markedly confused and muddled, accidentally implying that some individuals possess inherent genetic coding that makes them dangerous. This sat uneasily within its conspiracy-thriller plot, in which ambitious rabbit police officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) teams up with rascally fox hustler Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to solve a case involving “predators” reverting to their primal, savage instincts.

Nine years may have given returning writers Jared Bush and Phil Johnston enough time to establish a more watertight metaphor, but the world has also grown extraordinarily more complicated than even the chaotic waters we navigated a decade ago. Perhaps that’s why Zootopia 2 lightens the load on the messaging. The film still carries a progressive, kid-friendly thesis reflective of the times, but it’s broader and more cleanly defined—something you could imagine many other children’s films arriving at as their final moral.

That’s a welcome shift, though Zootopia 2 is noticeably less funny on a moment-to-moment basis than its predecessor, and sometimes strains to recapture the crackling clash-of-personalities dynamic between Judy and Nick that powered the previous effort. That’s not entirely surprising given where that movie ended and this one begins: with the duo fresh off their first successful case and settling into their partnership within the Zootopia Police Department. They’re quickly drawn into a new puzzle tied to animal injustices, involving a powerful Lynx family connected to the city’s founding and a snake named Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), who serves as an avatar for the ostracized reptiles of Zootopia, forced into meager, hidden pockets of the metropolis by fearful denizens.

That displacement is the engine of Zootopia 2’s thematic concerns. Our Succession-coded family of wealthy, luxury-dwelling Lynxes plan to weaponize the Weather Wall technology that creates Zootopia’s diverse biomes, eliminating the swamps and marshes where reptiles thrive to expand their own habitats. Their hurdle is Pawbert Lynxley (Andy Samberg), the more broad-minded family member who befriends the heroes in an effort to crack this gentrification conspiracy wide open.

The film’s true buddy-cop structure is sure to keep kids invested, thanks to its quick-shifting plot dynamics and the colorful, buoyant animation that defines this era of Disney CG. Directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard return from the first film, and following Encanto, they deliver something more reliably entertaining than the studio’s other recent animated ventures like Moana 2 and Wish, even if the movie caps itself at a moderate quality ceiling. Zootopia 2 has a fun story pitch, but it’s nestled in a film that feels more generic than its predecessor, with fewer memorable new characters and jokes that are slightly bland, lazily repeated, or occasionally irritating. (An animated Disney movie making a quip about studios relying on endless sequels and live-action remakes would be cute if I weren’t 95% sure a realistically animated Zootopia is inevitable.)

Plot developments eventually place Nick and Judy on separate tracks for a large portion of the runtime, but none of the new Zootopia citizens they encounter fully occupy the void created by the absence of their dynamic directly guiding the story and humor. The sprawling voice cast validates the notion that not all actors are voice actors, as most performers here tend to slip into the background. New and returning players include Goodwin, Bateman, Quan, Samberg, Idris Elba, Shakira, Fortune Feimster, Stephanie Beatriz, and more, though only a few make an impression in either character detail or vocal distinction: Patrick Warburton as the new actor-turned-mayor, horse Brian Winddancer, and Danny Trejo in an all-too-brief turn as Jesús, an outlaw cowboy lizard who frequents the reptile bar where Nick and Judy’s adventure leads them.

Even so, Zootopia 2 has an endearingly zippy energy and refuses to sink to the rock-bottom depths of mindless children’s entertainment, making it refreshingly watchable for adults. The animation adheres to the relatively nondescript, bubbly 3D Disney house style, but Bush, Howard, and their visual effects team maintain a pleasing sense of motion and engagement, incorporating fast-moving set pieces and silly sight gags that land with a decent chuckle. Zootopia’s broader world-building continues to charm—there’s a distinct video-game-like quality to the sequel as our heroes traverse an overworld of distinct biomes, each with different objectives. City streets, marshlands, deserts, and snowy tundras all feature, giving the film a varied sense of atmosphere.

And when they’re paired up, Judy and Nick still spark with a compelling contrast of personalities, with Judy’s optimistic ambition routinely colliding with Nick’s weary cynicism. “The world will never be a better place if no one is willing to do the right thing,” Judy says, to which Nick counters, “Sometimes being a hero doesn’t make a difference.” Anyone who’s seen a children’s movie can guess where the two land by the end, but the destination is a well-meaning lesson for kids growing up in an increasingly antagonistic world. Zootopia 2 doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but its core message—championing acceptance and kindness as essential virtues of being a good person (or animal)—remains a simple, worthy idea to reinforce to kids and parents alike.

Walt Disney Pictures will release Zootopia 2 only in theaters on November 26.