While it’s far from a shock that Zootopia, Disney Animation Studios’ Academy Award-winning, billion-dollar-earning, box-office hit, spawned a not-unexpected sequel, taking the better part of a decade to reach IP-ready audiences certainly qualifies as one (a shock, that is).
But in good news to some, if not many, family-oriented moviegoers, the return to the title’s not-quite-utopian city-state in Zootopia 2 proves to be easily worth the investment in time, tickets, and concessions.
When we last saw Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a diminutive rabbit turned law enforcement officer, and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a wily fox and con artist turned partner-in-crime-solving, on the big screen, they had uncovered a nefarious conspiracy and saved the city-state of the title, Zootopia, from descending into a Disneyfied brand of us/them authoritarianism and overturning the peaceful coexistence between prey animals and their predators.
Nick’s public display of heroism also helped to overturn the anti-fox biases and prejudices that had defined his life choices. The respect and appreciation sent Nick's way convinced him to leave his misdemeanor-filled ways in the rear window. Even more importantly, Nick decided to follow Judy into Zootopia’s police department as a uniformed officer, like Judy, the first of his species to join, solidifying their personal and professional partnership.
Zootopia 2 picks up almost immediately after the end of the first film, with Judy and Nick, both celebrated and resented for their city-state-saving ways, facing a combination of appreciation and resentment. Their perpetually cranky boss, Chief Bogo (Idris Elba), unceremoniously relegates the dynamic duo to low-status traffic duty. It’s not long, though, before they’re taking the initiative and engaging in a risky, high-speed pursuit through the city’s crowded streets, inadvertently leaving a wake of destruction, including the statue of one of the city’s founders, behind.
It’s all the excuse Bogo needs to force Judy and Nick into group therapy for dysfunctional, mismatched partners. An early highlight, the session gives Judy and Nick a look into their possible future as partners, none of them good. Led by a self-described “emotional support therapist,” Dr. Fuzzby (Quinta Brunson), the group scene cleverly sets up Zootopia 2's central conflict, Judy and Nick working on themselves, maturing individually, and growing together as partners in crime-solving, each contributing their complementary strengths.
Though the message about the inherent value of friendships and relationships remains unchanged -- it unsurprisingly starts and ends with trust and setting aside conscious and subconscious biases -- the plot this time retweaks the first film’s now controversial pro-diversity, pro-inclusion, and pro-equity themes, expanding it to include until-now-unmentioned reptiles, permanently exiled a hundred years earlier from Zootopia for vaguely defined misdeeds, feared and reviled in equal measure, treated not only as dangerous outcasts, but existential threats to the legal, cultural, and social order.
Skeptical of the Powers-That-Be and what they're selling to the general populace, Judy and Nick begin an off-the-proverbial-books investigation when one of Zootopia's founding documents, a diary belonging to the Lynxley clan, disappears down the gullet of an escaping snake, Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), and the various climate-controlled “lands” outside the central city, once again setting up Judy and Nick as Zootopia’s equivalent of “underdogs,” battling both new villains (whose identities won’t be spoiled here) and an easily manipulated ZPD turned against Judy and Nick.
Once again overflowing with hilarious sight gags, rapid-fire verbal puns, and frenetic set pieces, Zootopia 2 cleverly builds on the first film’s winning formula, all the while using surface-deep pleasures to thoughtfully explore how different forms of propaganda, national — or, in this case, city-state — myth-building, and unimpeded territorial expansion can lead to a corrupted, undemocratic political structure and politicians who serve elites and not the people who voted for them. Heady stuff for an animated film ostensibly aimed at children.
Like its predecessor, though, Zootopia 2 smartly has something for almost everyone (reactionary wingers, as usual, excepted).
Zootopia 2 opens today, only in movie theaters, via Walt Disney Studios. Visit the official site for locations and showtimes.