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.
-
The twists and turns in the fight against HIVThe Explainer Scientific advances offer hopes of a cure but ‘devastating’ foreign aid cuts leave countries battling Aids without funds
-
Storyteller: a ‘fitting tribute’ to Robert Louis StevensonThe Week Recommends Leo Damrosch’s ‘valuable’ biography of the man behind Treasure Island
-
Is Europe finally taking the war to Russia?Today's Big Question As Moscow’s drone buzzes and cyberattacks increase, European leaders are taking a more openly aggressive stance
-
Storyteller: a ‘fitting tribute’ to Robert Louis Stevenson
The Week Recommends Leo Damrosch’s ‘valuable’ biography of the man behind Treasure Island
-
The rapid-fire brilliance of Tom StoppardIn the Spotlight The 88-year-old was a playwright of dazzling wit and complex ideas
-
‘Mexico: A 500-Year History’ by Paul Gillingham and ‘When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy’ by David Margolickfeature A chronicle of Mexico’s shifts in power and how Sid Caesar shaped the early days of television
-
Homes by renowned architectsFeature Featuring a Leonard Willeke Tudor Revival in Detroit and modern John Storyk design in Woodstock
-
Film reviews: ‘Hamnet,’ ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and ‘Eternity’Feature Grief inspires Shakespeare’s greatest play, a flamboyant sleuth heads to church and a long-married couple faces a postmortem quandary
-
We Did OK, Kid: Anthony Hopkins’ candid memoir is a ‘page-turner’The Week Recommends The 87-year-old recounts his journey from ‘hopeless’ student to Oscar-winning actor
-
The Mushroom Tapes: a compelling deep dive into the trial that gripped AustraliaThe Week Recommends Acclaimed authors team up for a ‘sensitive and insightful’ examination of what led a seemingly ordinary woman to poison four people
-
‘Chess’feature Imperial Theatre, New York City
