All posts by One Guys Opinion

Dr. Frank Swietek is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dallas, where he is regarded as a particularly tough grader. He has been the film critic of the University News since 1988, and has discussed movies on air at KRLD-AM (Dallas) and KOMO-AM (Seattle). He is also the Founding President of the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics' Association, a group of print and broadcast journalists covering film in the Metroplex area, and was a charter member of the Society of Texas Film Critics. Dr. Swietek is a member of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). He was instrumental in the creation of the Lone Star Awards, which, through the efforts of the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Film Commission, give recognition annually to the best feature films and television programs produced in Texas.
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ZOOTOPIA 2

Producer: Yvett Merino   Directors:  Jared Bush and Byron Howard   Screenplay: Jared Bush   Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Justin Bateman, Ke Huy Quan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Idris Elba, Shakira, Patrick Warburton, Quinta Brunson, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Macaulay Culkin, Brenda Song, Maurice LaMarche, Raymond S. Persi, John Leguizamo, David VanTuyle and Jenny Slate   Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures  

Grade: B+

An antic, joke-filled, hugely enjoyable sequel to the 2016 movie that was one of Disney’s best modern animated originals but, apart from a short streaming mini-series, never developed a typical franchise, “Zootopia 2” comes packed with the same recipe of colorful action, upbeat messages and witty throwaway humor—including lots of movie allusions—that marked the first installment. Perhaps that shouldn’t be shocking, since it’s the work of Jared Bush and Byron Howard, two of the creators of the original, but it’s unusual in a follow-up, especially one a decade in the making.  In any event, the result should entertain viewers of all ages, kids with its endless energy and adults with its string of clever bits that may go over youngsters’ heads but will cause their parents to grin in recognition. And it’s all wrapped up in a lesson about accepting others for who they are and overcoming unreasoning fear and division.

Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman once again lend their voices to the characters of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, the steadfastly legal rabbit and con-animal fox who, in the first installment, bonded to unravel a conspiracy in the metropolis where animals were meant to live together in peace and harmony.  Now they’re unlikely partners in the Zootopian police force under the stern direction of Chief Bogo (Idris Elba, another returnee), an imperious buffalo.

They earn the latter’s ire by inserting themselves without authorization in a smuggling case implicating a crooked anteater (John Leguizamo), and he sends them to a parters counseling group led by a quokka therapist (Quinton Brunson).  But while Nick is happy to kick back and relax, Judy is anxious to prove herself and insists that they infiltrate the big centennial celebration for Zootopia’s founding the Chief has ordered them to stay away from, even though during their ill-fated smuggling caper she’d found a piece of snake skin—evidence than one of the critters banned from the city might have designs on something at the bash.

The high-toned affair, a magnet for the Zootopian elite, has as its centerpiece the journal outlining the invention of the climate walls, the cornerstone of Zoopotia’s existence, by the city’s exalted founder Ebeneezer Lynxley, whose bobcat descendants, led by domineering Milton (David Strathairn), are its great power brokers.  As it turns out, Judy is right: viper Gary (Ke Huy Quan), is slithering around with plans to steal the journal and abduct Milton.  In the melee that results, the partners wind up in possession of the book but pursued by the ZPD while Gary is spirited away by a mysterious figure.

To further outline the convolutions of the plot would itself be criminal; suffice it to say that the succession of chases, reversals, betrayals, perils and revelations would tax a viewer who figured out Robert Towne’s “Chinatown” long before the finale.  You can be sure that good will triumph over evil, however, and that in the end Judy and Nick move from merely tolerating their temperamental differences to embracing them.  That bridging of what still divides them mirrors the broadening of Zootopian society as a whole.

“Zootopia 2” returns many of the favorites fans will remember from the first installment in addition to Judy, Nick and Bogo.  Among them are Gazelle (Shakira), who contributes a new song; cop Clawhauser (Nate Torrence), the doughnut-loving cheetah whose help proves essential at a critical moment; Mr. Big (Maurice LaMarche), the Arctic shrew crime boss with headquarters in the icy Tundratown district; Flash (Raymond S. Persi), the sloth who talks slowly but drives really fast; and even Bellwether (Jenny Slate), the sheep with wolfish tendencies.

But there are scads of added characters besides the irresistible Gary (his family name, he reveals, is De’Snake), most notably Nibbles (Fortune Feimster), a chatty beaver whose penchant for conspiracy theories proves on the money, and Pawbert (Andy Samberg), the nervous outcast of the Lynxley family who’s determined to set things right.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  In addition to Tundratown, in their peregrinations our heroes visit Marsh Market, a seaside district where they encounter, among others, Russ (David VanTuyle), a walrus who ferries them to an enclave where they confer with Jesús (Danny Trejo), a throaty basilisk who offers them a dish you won’t believe as well as some monitory advice.  They also take a trip to an Alpine region where they get directions to an abandoned lodge from a couple of mountain goats voiced by the directors themselves in ridiculous accents. Also on hand periodically is Winddancer (Patrick Warburton), a stallion with a stentorian voice who’s the preening new mayor of Zootopia, constantly tossing his mane into the most photogenic position like the actor he used to be who, given the level of official corruption in the place, could turn out to be friend or foe.

And those are just relatively major characters.  The movie is chockablock with lesser critters who appear ever so briefly but are voiced by a small army of big names that includes the likes of June Squibb, Dwyane Johnson, Michael J. Fox, Josh Gad and even Ed Sheerin (who co-wrote the new song Shakira belts out, “Zoo”).

Like many animated movies, “Zootopia 2” is essentially one long chase, but it’s so cleverly written, with riffs on pop culture (especially movies) that come so fast it will take repeated viewings to catch them all and visual gags that shoot by with equal rapidity, and so handsomely made (with a consistently ingenious production design by Cory Loftis) that it’s more than just action, integrating its message about tolerance and acceptance of others into the mix without getting too preachy in the process.  And it moves along spiffily, thanks to the nimble editing by Jeremy Milton, the rollicking score by Michael Giacchino and, of course, superlative voice work down the line, with Quan and Feimster joining Goodwin and Bateman as the first among equals.

Be sure to stick around for a mid-credits scene that suggests the direction in which a sequel might take wing.  If that projected third installment comes close to matching the cheerful exuberance and nice messaging of these first two, bring it on ASAP.   

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ETERNITY

Producers: Tim White and Trevor White   Director: David Freyne   Screenplay: Pat Cunnane and David Freyne   Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early and Olga Merediz   Distributor: A24

Grade: C

The afterlife comes across as a rather dismal place in David Freyne’s dramedy, which he co-wrote with Pat Cunnane.  It consists of a huge train terminal (pun intended) where the recently departed arrive at the age in their lives when, supposedly, they were most happy, however old they might have been at their demise.  Each is assigned a coordinator for a week, during which the arrival must choose an ultimate destination where he or she will spend eternity.  The various possibilities are advertised around them, and range widely.  Want to spend every day on a sunny beach?  In a mountain cabin?  At a place that welcomes smokers, or gamblers?  The opportunities are many, and often absurdly niche.  The catch is that once you make your choice, it’s irrevocable: you’re sent on and can’t come back.

This seems to ensure an eternity of endless sameness and boredom, a circumstance that the script never addresses at all.  And, of course, there’s nothing of transcendence about it: it’s just a prolongation of a life one chooses without the admittedly annoying elements of aging and death.  An interesting script might have been written about it.   

But instead, the movie turns into a sappy romantic triangle centering on the Cutlers, Larry and Joan.  We meet them as an elderly couple bickering as they travel to a family “gender reveal” party.  Joan (Betty Buckley) is suffering from terminal cancer, and Larry (Barry Primus) worries about the trip overtaxing her.  But it’s he who dies during the event, choking on a pretzel soon after seeing a photo of his wife with her handsome first husband, who died in the Korean War.

Larry arrives at the busily bureaucratic afterlife station as a young man (Miles Teller), apparently when he was a newlywed.  He decides that he must wait for Joan to join him before proceeding, as he can’t imagine spending eternity without her.  His coordinator Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) allows this, and Larry prepares to stay for a while, comforting himself with an occasional visit to a bar where a guy named Luke (Callum Turner) mixes the drinks.

It’s not long before Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) shows up, having died quietly in bed.  Larry welcomes her enthusiastically, expecting they can quickly move on together to an eternity of their choosing.  But there’s a complication.  Luke turns out to be her first husband, who has waited for decades for her to join him in going to the rustic mountain cabin they’d imagined spending their life in. And as she explains to her coordinator Ryan (John Early) and to livewire Karen (Olga Merediz), a deceased friend who’s enjoying her freedom, choosing between the two men is tearing her apart.  Meanwhile she’s given the chance to spend time with both, while they in turn squabble about which of them she should choose.

This situation is not unlike that found in earlier movies without the “supernatural” trappings—think, for example, of “My Favorite Wife” (1940) and its remake, “Move Over, Darling” (1963), in which a supposedly dead wife returns to find her husband remarried, and he must make the choice between her and his second wife.  What “Eternity” does is to mash together the hoary scenario with Albert Brooks’s “Defending Your Life,” and unhappily it does neither justice, missing both genuine romance and the deadpan wit Brooks brought to the table.

It’s also a terrible cheat.  It spends inordinate time in world-building, explaining the rules that govern terminal procedure and the choice of a final destination.  Yet it treats Joan’s dilemma as unique, even though given the billions of folks who have passed through over the centuries others must have faced similar situations; for Anna and Ryan, however, this is a crisis that requires referring it to some unspecified upstairs for approval of special dispensations.  But even that is secondary to the fact that after telling us the rules governing the choices arrivals make are ironclad, the script tosses all that out the window in the end to allow our protagonists to change things by running around through hallways, climbing ladders and easily evading pursuers.  It turns out that the world the script has so assiduously constructed is a crock.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t some amusing grace notes to it.  The exposition hall where proponents of the various final destinations hawk their ludicrous wares is a testament to the foolishness of people’s preferences, and the archive where Joan goes to view memories that might help her make her choice is a nifty idea, especially when it’s presided over by an increasingly grumpy ticket-seller.  Generally, though, it’s a curiously bland place in Zazu Myers’ production design, and Ruairí O’Brien’s flat cinematography doesn’t endow it with any magic.  Even David Fleming’s score is ordinary.

Things might be different if the leads had much chemistry, but they don’t.  The best is Teller, who at least brings frazzled energy to Larry; but Olsen’s Joan is, despite her centrality in the triangle, curiously dull in her indecision.  (Truth be told, Primus and Beckley are the more interesting couple.)  And Turner comes across as a good-looking blank.

As for Early and Randolph, they’re stuck in stereotyped parts—he the effete white dweeb, she the rotund, good-natured black woman—that feel prefabricated.  Merediz brings some spunk to her scenes and a few of the lesser characters register briefly, but overall it’s hard to root for anyone here, or to feel their pain and joy.  That’s a factor of pedestrian direction from Freyne and dilatory editing by Joe Sawyer, which dilute any fizz the story might have generated.

The result is a fairly anemic otherworldly rom-com about an afterlife that’s barely worth visiting, let alone spending an eternity in.