Zootopia 2 Review

Jared Bush and Byron Howard pick up shortly after the first film, with Judy and Nick freshly partnered, already bickering, and ordered into partners therapy with a quokka psychotherapist voiced by Quinta Brunson. The therapy gag is the best structural idea here, because it makes the buddy formula the subject rather than the vehicle. The plot proper is a caper: a pit viper crashes the Zootennial Gala, a journal goes missing, the rookies are framed by the Lynxley family that has run the city for a century, and the chase leads into Marsh Market, a humid reptile enclave the animators fill with invention.

Ke Huy Quan's Gary De'Snake is a wounded, anxious, very funny creation, and Fortune Feimster's conspiracy beaver Nibbles gets the biggest laughs. The twist, that the softest member of the ruling family is the one holding the knife, is well hidden, and the argument underneath, a founding myth built on plagiarism, is more pointed than the first film's profiling parable.

Peter Bradshaw called it soulless and corporately approved. He was the outlier: 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, an A CinemaScore, the BAFTA for animated film, and 1.87 billion dollars worldwide. It is longer and louder than it needs to be, and it holds the line the original set rather than clearing it.