It has taken nine years for Disney to follow up its animated blockbuster “Zootropolis”, said Helen O’Hara in Empire. Set in a metropolis populated exclusively by anthropomorphic animals, that film saw earnest rabbit cop Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) team up with sly fox con artist Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to expose city-wide skullduggery.
This sequel has the same characters and the same rich detail as the original, but its story is all over the place: it “smacks less of fox-like cunning and more of rabbit in the headlights”.
In “Zootropolis 2”, the city is still “a multi-species paradise”; but we learn that reptiles have been banished from its limits for a century. When Hopps and Wilde – now recruited as a policeman – discover that one has infiltrated the metropolis, they set out to investigate.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Although the film is uneven, “the chases, sleuthing and action are all delightful”, and the city is well worth a return trip: “there are inspired visual gags in every other frame”.
What starts as “a standard buddy cop movie” becomes increasingly complicated, said Brandon Yu in The New York Times. On the hunt for a runaway snake named Gary (Ke Huy Quan), who has pickpocketed an aristocratic lynx, the pair start to unearth “an elaborate conspiracy” to do with “discriminatory city planning” and “fear-mongering toward minorities”. Together, they tumble “through an ark-load of action set pieces”, each one beautifully and expansively realised.
“It’s ambitious until it’s too much”: children will struggle to follow the plot, let alone the complex social allegories. It’s “a tad unsubtle”, said Ed Potton in The Times, but the tone remains “breezy” throughout. “Exuberantly animated and deliciously voiced”, it’s a “perky and amusing” movie.
-
Filing statuses: What they are and how to choose one for your taxesThe Explainer Your status will determine how much you pay, plus the tax credits and deductions you can claim
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibition
The Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classic
The Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
-
Is This Thing On? – Bradley Cooper’s ‘likeable and spirited’ romcomThe Week Recommends ‘Refreshingly informal’ film based on the life of British comedian John Bishop
-
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars – history at its most ‘human’The Week Recommends Alwyn Turner’s ‘witty and wide-ranging’ account of the interwar years
