The original “Zootopia” was a minor miracle.
The original “Zootopia” was a minor miracle. Here was a Disney animated film that took themes of race and prejudice and managed to make a sensitive-to-all-sides tale, anthropomorphize it and, as a bonus, sneak in a Department of Motor Vehicles sloth gag that the DMV is still wincing from.
A sequel coming almost a decade later, “Zootopia 2” isn’t as good. It’s a more timid and tame movie that leans largely on the (still winning) duo of Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and the small-time hustler fox Nick Wilde ( Jason Bateman ). Both are now out-to-prove-themselves rookies on the police force, nicknamed “the fuzz.”
Nobody would call the original “Zootopia” an especially biting satire. But, still, the sequel is a little toothless — not just Nick’s move from con man to cop but throughout the metropolis. Nick’s baby-posing partner in crime, the fennec fox Finnick (Tommy Lister Jr., who died in 2020), is only briefly seen. Missing entirely is anyone like Tommy Chong’s nudist stoner yak. A hint of gentrification, you might say, has swept over Zootopia.
So “Zootopia 2,” directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard (both veterans from the first film), is, like many long-in-coming sequels, a slightly watered down version of what came before. But the central relationship of Judy and Nick, a team-up with some echoes of “48 Hours,” remains a compelling one, and the primary reason that “Zootopia 2” will be plenty satisfying to families seeking more cartoony lions and tigers and bears (oh my) this November.
