★★★☆☆ Zootopia 2, directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard
Fabulous animation, but laid on with a trowel
Zootopia 2
Directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard
I saw Zootopia 2 yesterday, 13-Dec-2025, on an IMAX screen. It was fabulous. I use the word fabulous in the strict sense: “like a fable.” Here is how Wikipedia defines “fable:”
Fable is a literary genre defined as a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphised, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, which may at the end be added explicitly as a concise maxim or saying.
Of course, fabulous is also used as general purpose superlative praise, and Zootopia 2 deserves that in some ways. The animation is spectacular. It is hyper-realistic, but only for a peculiar understanding of “realistic.” The animals of Zootopia are, of course, very little like real animals. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde don’t look much like any real rabbit and fox I have ever seen. Nor does Chief Bogo look like a real Cape Buffalo, and God knows you have never seen a real horse that looks like Mayor Winddancer. They’re all very human, but with certain exaggerated animal characteristics. The animators, however, have a clear idea in mind for what each of these fabulous animals is, physically. And they commit to it completely. I remember one particular scene where Judy and Nick have just been ejected from a water pipe. They’re soaking wet, and their fur looks like real animal fur that has been immersed in water.
As it happens, I saw The Bad Guys 2 recently. It’s another animated fable in which the characters are aniamls. The animals in The Bad Guys are much sketchier, much more cartoonish. Nothing about them suggests the adjective “realistic.” It’s not that The Bad Guys gets something wrong that Zootopia gets right. It’s that they made different choices.
And I, for one, loved the way Zootopia 2 executed the animation it chose.
Sadly, Zootopia 2 is fabulous in another way. The story “illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson.” That was where Celia’s words in As You Like It seemed apposite:
that was laid on with a trowel.
If Bush and Howard have any idea of the concept of subtlety, they utterly failed to demonstrate it. The story is little more than a vehicle for a heavy-handed moral message.
Now, I hear you saying, “It’s just a kids movie! The kids won’t mind.”
EXCUSE ME! At the age of seven I was already able to detect when someone was preaching at me. I had even less patience for it then than I do now, and I have precious little now.