Zootopia 2 (2025) a.k.a. Zootropolis 2
Disney’s animated film Zootopia (2016), released in the UK and elsewhere as Zootroplis, was a comedy cop thriller set in a city of intelligent beasts. One of Disney’s funniest films, it had laughs with brains, highlighting prejudice and hatemongering amid the cartoon animals.
As an animated sequel, Zootopia 2/Zootroplis 2 can blithely ignore how long it’s been since its predecessor came out. Rabbit cop Judy Hopps, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, is still a rookie, though now she’s joined by her sardonic fox ally Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), who’s graduated from being a conman to Judy’s cop partner.
Judy’s over-ambition leads to the pair’s humiliation. Undaunted, she starts an unofficial investigation, convinced that a snake – a species long banished from Zootopia – will commit a crime. After a heist at a mansion, Judy and Nick are accused of being criminals themselves and must go on the run, straining their friendship.
Whereas the first Zootopia introduced us to a world that was surprising at every turn, the sequel’s first act is overfamiliar. Some of it even parallels a cartoon released last summer, DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys 2. The film’s jokes, though, shine. There are madcap chases where the gags are furiously fast even for a cartoon, but also more leisurely bits of whimsy. A rodent workman dislodges a drink stuck in a vending machine. A walrus captain’s “boat” is a cartoon gag good enough to rival the first film’s glacially moving sloth, who naturally makes a return appearance.
Unfortunately, the leads are muted for much of the film. In the first Zootopia, Judy and Nick made a mistrustful odd couple, and their comedic rivalry and slow-dawning friendship were witty and delightful. In the sequel, their communication problems are the focus, with Nick unable to keep up with the ever-driven Judy. But this suddenly imposed lack of chemistry is an unwelcome drag on the comedy.
Granted, it sets up a very good pay-off in the last act. One late scene has Nick and Judy finally facing each other and declaring their feelings. It could have easily been mawkish; instead, it works beautifully, balancing sincerity with wry humour. Even so, it doesn’t make up for the characters’ flattened relationship in the earlier scenes.
The other disappointment is the crime plot, an anodyne rerun of the one in the first film. In particular, the snake at the heart of the mystery, voiced by Ke Huy Quan, is a saccharine character, ineffectual and unfrightening. He should have been angry and venomous, as Bateman’s socially-oppressed fox was in the first film when he showed his teeth.
Some readers might find that a perversely “adult” comment about a Disney cartoon with talking animals. Of course, I could point to this website’s name; it’s also debatable if the film’s themes are any more mature than Toy Story’s were thirty years ago. And if we’re talking about precedents, then the abundance of reptilian characters in Zootopia 2 might put animation fans in mind of Gore Verbinski’s emphatically mature Rango in 2011.
But Zootopia 2 can still feel like a reversal of the brand-Disney cartoon norm. By now, the child audience might be secondary to the grown-ups. The “save the day” mission in the film becomes convoluted enough to require a time-out for unwieldy exposition, while one of the final set-pieces turns into fanservice for Gen-Xers, referencing a horror movie from five decades ago. Maybe Disney isn’t ignoring the passage of time since the first Zootopia. Rather, it could be treating the kids who saw it nine years ago as the baseline audience today.
IN A NUTSHELL:
Still very good fun, but a clear notch down from the original.
★★★★☆
