Zootopia 2 (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

After almost a decade (wow, that hurt to say), Disney takes us back to the wonderful world of Zootopia with a rambunctious and highly entertaining follow-up to their 2016 hit. There's not much for me to say here, so this will be brief.

Arguably funnier than the first film, Zootopia 2 launches at breakneck speed and barely lets up. For those of you who have some trouble with the speed of animated films these days, be warned, because this one is a doozy. It's hard to understand the story when you're trying to understand the dialogue while processing visual gags and appreciating voice acting, an evocative score, and everything else the filmmakers are throwing at us. And you can tell the material is there for fans who will rewatch at home, with subtitles and the ability to pause, because some of the jokes are brilliant. Disney has its usual cleverness on full display here in turning familiar IPs, places, services, and archetypes into animal versions, often merely providing set dressing and background curiosities to the scenes. A compiled list of all the punny advertisements and products and channels included in this film would probably be longer than the screenplay itself.

And this is what makes Zootopia one of Disney's best stories from the last decade: its determination to speak to our contemporary world through the eyes of anthropomorphized animals. Like its predecessor, this film functions as a sort of primer for civics, a lesson about community-building and the pursuit of justice in an overwhelming and chaotic world often hostile to those goals. Kids will appreciate the unlikely friendship of its protagonists and the example they provide regarding how trust and forgiveness can be practiced and built. Adults may find meatier morals in its dissection of the interplay between vast wealth and city planning, with all the political and commercial consequences that implies. It's all here, in a palatable, fast-paced adventurous romp through various urban biomes in a fantasy world.

More importantly, the story's theming (like Frozen 2, among others) stems from its interest in roots. What happened, in the past, to make things the way they are now? The first film dealt with this too, though to a slightly lesser degree. In this sequel, Judy and Nick again must uncover a conspiracy and plot; the first time, it was about prejudice and injustice being weaponized by political leaders and law enforcement, but this time, it's about founding fathers and oligarchs hiding the truth of their ill-gotten wealth and status. Hinging on concerns about the "haves" and "have-nots," the story showcases how propaganda becomes less visible when it's enshrined as history by those it benefits. Silenced voices, in these situations, are the crucial ones needed to effect justice.

I eagerly await a rewatch of this film. First, I was awed by its visual imagination and creative riffs on everything from YouTube (EweTube, if I recall correctly) to a massive water Tube that functions like the nominally linked London Underground yet could prove dangerous to mammals trying to drift to other parts of the metropolis. But as the film continued, I admit to having found myself lost among its rather complicated plot. It helps you understand the most important bits -- and rehashes some of its finer points as you continue, keeping you up to speed on anything of comprehensive necessity -- but as a sort of mystery, it bears further consideration. Thankfully, with its post-credits scene, the film itself suggests that another installment is coming; I certainly hope that is the case, though I hope they go in a slightly different direction with it (though each film so far has dealt with what we might call racism and ethnic prejudice regarding predators/prey and reptiles, and the next may as well with birds) to avoid a rinse-and-repeat scaffolded approach.