Zootopia 2 (2025) Reviews: What Critics Said

Editorial note: This is a roundup of published criticism of Zootopia 2. Celluloid has not screened the film for this piece, and it carries no Celluloid rating. The critics are named and linked under Sources.

Is Zootopia 2 worth watching?

Most critics say yes: Zootopia 2 is a bright, busy and warm-hearted sequel that works best as a return visit to Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, even if its mystery is weaker than the 2016 original’s. Reviewers praised the voice cast, the expanded city and Ke Huy Quan’s gentle snake. The recurring complaint is a familiar, overcrowded plot, and one critic found the whole thing a stagnant retread.

What is Zootopia 2 about?

Fresh from cracking the biggest case in their city’s history, rookie police partners Judy Hopps, a rabbit, and Nick Wilde, a fox, find themselves on the trail of a new mystery when a snake named Gary De’Snake arrives and turns the animal metropolis upside down. Solving it means going undercover in unfamiliar corners of Zootopia, and the pair’s partnership is tested along the way. Jared Bush and Byron Howard direct, from a script by Bush. Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman return as Judy and Nick, joined by Ke Huy Quan as Gary, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg and David Strathairn. The film runs 108 minutes and was released in November 2025; in the UK it is titled Zootropolis 2.

What critics praised

The partnership at the film’s heart earned the most consistent praise. In The Film Verdict, Alonso Duralde described the Judy and Nick relationship as some of the most complex and satisfying character interplay in current Disney animation, and admired a film that entertains adults and children alike without crude humour, singling out its chase sequences and its message about wealth inequality. Tim Grierson, writing for Screen Daily, felt the emotional bond between the two leads carries the picture, particularly once the characters drop their sarcasm.

The expanded world impressed several reviewers. At Empire, Helen O’Hara found the city richly detailed and often very funny, full of inspired visual gags and enjoyable chases, and welcomed the new characters voiced by Quan and Andy Samberg. Phil de Semlyen of Time Out praised the lush, carefully designed animation and new settings such as a reptile-inhabited swamp and snowy mountains, and thought Gary’s premise, a sweet-natured creature who happens to be venomous, gave the story a neat central tension.

Amelia Emberwing at TheWrap praised the bright visuals and the chemistry of the returning leads, and argued that the sequel widens the franchise’s message about who deserves a place in the world. Caroline Siede of the AV Club, the least persuaded of this group, still commended the storyline about displaced reptiles for echoing real histories of erased communities, and praised Quan’s empathetic performance.

Where critics were divided

The mystery itself was the most common sticking point. De Semlyen felt the plot falls short of the first film’s noir-inflected cleverness and may be hard for younger viewers to follow. O’Hara thought the story lacks cunning and that the directors lavish more attention on the city than on the two leads. Grierson found the whodunit rarely engaging, the humour hit-or-miss and the film references too blatant, and concluded that it works better as a hangout film than as a caper.

Emberwing found a miscommunication plot device grating and questioned the decision to include a conspiracy-theorist character, Nibbles Maplestick, in a children’s film at a time of widespread disinformation. Duralde’s reservation was thematic: he argued that the reptile-versus-mammal conflict simplifies the film’s racial metaphor in ways its actual plot does not support.

The sharpest dissent came from Siede, who judged the sequel content to repeat the original’s beats rather than explore new territory. Where de Semlyen saw lush animation, she found it brighter, flatter and cheaper-looking than the first film’s, and likened the whole enterprise to a streaming series rather than an animated event, with too many cameos and new faces competing for screen time.

Who is it for?

Families who enjoyed the first film are the obvious audience, and Duralde found the humour pitched to work across ages. The film is rated PG in the US and the UK, though de Semlyen warned that the noir-style plot may lose the smallest viewers. It sits comfortably alongside the site’s other animation and family titles, and cast, age ratings and streaming details are on the Zootopia 2 film page.

The critical verdict

Critics largely welcomed Zootopia 2 as a warm, handsome and frequently funny sequel, with the Judy and Nick partnership and Ke Huy Quan’s snake as its main assets. Most also agreed that its central mystery lacks the snap of the 2016 film and that the story is overcrowded. The AV Club’s dissent saw it as a safe retread. The broad view is that it delivers a satisfying return trip rather than a leap forward.