The result has, at times, a certain controlled desperation – “look, folks, there truly is something for everyone here!” some scenes seem to scream. But Disney, when minded, can still do this stuff as well as anyone – and in the pleasurable spring and snap of its animation, its at-times-unsettlingly comely character design, and set-pieces that swarm with humour and panache, Zootropolis 2 is proof.
Once again, the plot has Goodwin’s Judy and Bateman’s Nick team up to solve a film-noir-ish puzzle about civic corruption. (Like its predecessor, this film belongs to that bizarre series of family-friendly riffs on Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, alongside Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Detective Pikachu.) The villains this time are an elite clan of lynx, whose patriarch Milton, voiced by David Strathairn, is a sort of fluffy, feline spin on the 20th-century New York planning baron Robert Moses.
