Review: 'Zootopia 2' a worthy follow-up and the best Disney animated film in recent years11/25/2025  Disney Animation, 2025. It's been nearly a decade since the release of the Academy Award-winning Disney animated film, "Zootopia," a movie that defied all expectations and went on to gross over one billion dollars worldwide. It was praised not only for being a fun family film with many memorable scenes and characters (who can forget Flash the sloth?), but for its depth, exploring themes of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination. (Read my review of the first "Zootopia" film here).
With "Zootopia 2," Disney has come a long way from its cash-grab, direct-to-video sequels from a few decades ago. This is a worthy, insightful, and still fully accessible follow-up that reunites all of our favorite characters from the first film while adding in some solid newcomers. It builds on the deeper themes of the original, exploring empathy, trust and how history is often written by the winners. Mix in an all-star voice cast and vibrant, colorful animation, and Disney has delivered one of its best animated features in years.
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 Universal Pictures, 2025. The sequel and final chapter to one of the best films of 2024, "Wicked For Good" sticks the landing in a truly wondrous way. Anyone who cannot get swept up in this magical, fast-paced adventure may be missing the brains and heart...or worse, the courage...to admit that this is one of the most impressive musical-to-film adaptations - across two movies - that has ever been put on screen.
In truth, most of the criticism aimed at "Wicked For Good" is really criticism of the source material. If you walked out of the stage production feeling Act II was the weaker half, you will likely leave this movie with the same thought. But most moviegoers don’t speak in those terms. Nobody is stepping into the lobby asking, "So what did you think of the Second Act?" They leave with a feeling, an instinctive reaction to whether the film moved them or not. And for the vast majority, "Wicked For Good" will deliver that feeling in full, giving fans everything they hope for while also offering newcomers who only know the first film and have never seen the musical a truly wonderful time.  Universal Pictures, 2025. "The Bad Guys" - based on the children's book series by Aaron Blabey - has quietly grown into one of the more beloved family franchises in recent years. The first film adaptation in 2022 grossed over 250 million dollars and proved to be a pleasant surprise for the studio. And while I wasn't a big fan (see my review of the first film at the link below), its success led to follow-up Holiday and Halloween specials on Netflix, so a theatrical sequel felt inevitable.
The good news? "The Bad Guys 2" isn't all bad. It's diverse cast of misfits have gone from mildly annoying to surprisingly fun to be around.  Warner Bros. Pictures, 2025. When a movie based on the popular sandbox video game "Minecraft" was announced nearly a decade ago, fans cheered. Moments later, many of them thought, "Wait...what?"
Despite it's tremendous worldwide popularity - it is in fact the #1 best-selling video game of all time, outselling even games like Super Mario Bros. and Tetris - its open-world format doesn't necessarily come with a minable (pun intended) storyline suitable for a feature film. How would a Minecraft movie even work? What would it be about? Well, now we know. And the result is that "A Minecraft Movie" isn't all bad, in that it's a complete romp that both makes fun of and honors the blocky-universe it is based on. It's silly, ridiculous and ends up being a bit better than it has any business being. Albeit, it was a very low bar...video game movies have generally been awful, and expectations were minimal. Ironically, it's the hard-core Minecraft gamer, not the casual movie-goer, that may take issue with this movie the most. In aiming it at the masses, it obviously becomes a more accessible movie, but it simultaneously risks losing the adoration of those that made it popular in the first place.  Warner Bros. Animation/Ketchup Entertainment, 2025. While the beloved Looney Tunes characters are familiar and respectful, these aren't exactly your parents' Looney Tunes.
"The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie" is shockingly the first all-animated Looney Tunes movie ever released in movie theaters. It's also not being distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures...that duty is being handled by the much smaller Ketchup Entertainment, which is why this film might feel a bit "under the radar" for most. And while this weird, zany sci-fi story is quite harmless, it also feels a bit uninspired. It's been nearly 100 years since the release of the very first Looney Tunes animated short...and this is what we've all waited for?  Sony Pictures Releasing, 2025. Everybody loves Pattington, the Peruvian talking bear that winds up living a proper British life in London with his adopted human family, the Browns. So much so, that he's appeared in nearly 30 books since 1958, when he first appeared in the classic novel "A Bear Called Pattington," by author Michael Bond.
This is the first Pattington film since Bond's death in 2018, and the third in the surprisingly great film series that has not only been a success at the box office, but also with critics ("Pattington 2" held the rare 100% RottenTomatoes rating with over 250 reviews, until some boob famously posted a rotten score, surely to grab personal headlines).  2025 Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Animation. The major bone that I have to pick with "Dog Man," is that the titular character is actually the least interesting of the bunch. But that doesn't stop it from being a successful, if not all that stellar, family-friendly adventure.
 Disney, 2024. I have to admit: When I walked out of the theater after screening "Mufasa: The Lion King," the new prequel and sequel to the CG-realistic 2019 version of "The Lion King," I had a smile on my face. Indeed, there are some good messages and the movie got better, faster, stronger, as it went along, culminating in what felt like a satisfying conclusion.
But the more and more that I thought about what I had just seen, the more I felt...underwhelmed. The animated original, from 1994, was and is of course a modern classic. And I was one of the lonely critics that actually embraced the 2019 version (that last movie only ended up with a 51% on RottenTomatoes.com). Especially when I started comparing it to what had came before, I began to feel like the franchise deserved better. "Mufasa: The Lion King" doesn't feel like a pure cash grab in the way that, say, the straight-to-DVD "The Lion King 2" did. And yet, there is no real reason for its existence other than to ravage the dead carcass - like a hyena might - of yet another Disney classic, squeezing what little life might be left so that the masses can feed. When the tribute to James Earl Jones at the start of the film carries more weight than the film itself, there's a problem.  Disney+, 2024. I wouldn't refer to it as "hard-hitting," but a new documentary on Disney+ (streaming as of May 31st) called "Jim Henson: Idea Man" is a loving, and long-overdue tribute to a man who was way ahead of his time, absolutely right for his time, and simultaneously, gone way too soon.
 Paramount Pictures, 2024. It's cute, innocent and means well, but "IF" - an acronym for "Imaginary Friends" - leaves a lot to the imagination.
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