Zootopia 2 (2025)

Whatever name it had when I saw it (I THINK it was called Zootropolis for a while here in the UK), I quite enjoyed Zootopia. It wasn't part of the cream of the animated movie crop from the past decade, but it was cute and enjoyable enough. This sequel is slightly better, although maybe that's just because I can't really remember much from the first film now, but it's nowhere near as good as you'd expect the new English-language box office champion of animated movies to be. I guess that's just a reminder that box office doesn't always represent the quality of the product.

After a short amount of time being celebrated for their work, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) soon find themselves on the wrong side of the law. They start to figure out that something is wrong as they attempt to capture an alleged villain named Gary De'Snake (Ke Huy Quan), which leads to them investigating a powerful family who may have stolen and reframed the history of Zootopia.

With most of the main names returning, for the acting roles and the many "behind the camera" roles, Zootopia 2 should be praised, first of all, for expanding the onscreen world without feeling as if it's changing everything already shown in the first film. Writer Jared Bush, who also co-directed with Byron Howard, has an excellent instinct for details that are fun and imaginative, yet also feel perfectly plausible for a world designed for many different species of animals. 

As well as Goodwin, Bateman, and Quan, who are all great and feel well-suited for voicing their characters, there's room in the cast for performances from Fortune Feimster (playing the superbly-named Nibbles Maplestick), Andy Samberg, David Strathairn, Idris Elba, Patrick Warburton, Danny Trejo, and Shakira, as well as a number of other familiar names you may recognise once you hear them speaking.

Everything is obvious and predictable enough from early on, but that's what happens when you have a mystery at the heart of an animated family movie, but there's still enough done to keep tension running throughout, despite the obviousness of the ultimate end point. There's a quirky character added to the mix every 10-15 minutes, most of the gags work well, and I admit that I laughed more than expected when I noticed that Ed Sheeran had a tiny cameo as Ed Shearin.

Amusing, cute, and nicely animated, Zootopia 2 should keep most viewers entertained. I'm still bemused by it being the most successful English-language animated movie of all time, but I guess I'm decades older than the target demographic nowadays anyway. Maybe I'm just slightly out of touch, despite my consistent immaturity.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Electric State (2025)

Based on a book by Simon Stålenhag, and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, The Electric State is a sci-fi drama that packs every scene with numerous robots that seem to exist for no other reason than to justify the ridiculously bloated budget (which I've seen in the range of $275M-$320M). It's horribly empty stuff, not helped by two leads who aren't able to distract from the weaker elements.

In an alternate timeline, robots tried to demand more rights, which started a war between them and the humans. Robots are now held in an exclusion zone, and humans are kept docile and "safe" by wearing headsets that keep them connected to an online world overseen by tech mogul Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci). Millie Bobby Brown plays Michelle, a young woman who had her life ruined by the death of her parents and brother, and she ends up heading on a perilous journey when approached by a robot that claims to actually BE her brother. Her chances of success in getting into the exclusion zone will depend on enlisting the help of a scavenger named Keats (Chris Pratt), but there's a determined soldier (Giancarlo Esposito) using his remote robot body to hunt them down.

Re-uniting once again with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the Russos show a level of incompetence here that is bewildering to those who know how well they can do with big-budget spectacle. Despite keeping everything busy and overstuffed, nothing here has any impact. It's mind-numbingly predictable, none of the attempted small emotional beats work, and it should be a crime for any film-makers to manage to waste both Tucci and Esposito in such thankless roles.

Both Brown and Pratt can be very good in the right roles. These are not the right roles for them. That would be easier to accept if the robot cast was a better mix of fun designs and canny voice casting, but the voice cast ends up being as wasted as every one of the visible performers. Woody Harrelson is fun, overall, but Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Hank Azaria, Jenny Slate, and Alan Tudyk never get to be as good as they can be. As well as Tucci and Esposito, Ke Huy Quan is also left floundering with the poor screenplay, and both Holly Hunter and Jason Alexander are given far too little screentime.

A film of many paradoxes, this is an epic tale on a grand scale that never really feels as if we are really seeing a big picture. It's a film about technology that rarely feels relevant, but it's also looking at humanity without managing to find the warmth and emotion needed (particularly in the third act). It throws money around in a way that doesn't translate onscreen, completely fails to entertain at the simplest level, and seems to consistently and determinedly dull the potential shine of the stars at the heart of it.

I would compliment the soundtrack, if stretching for something nice to say, but even that is marred by a moment that has a melancholy piano version of Wonderwall on it. I'm sure everyone tried their best, from the production designers to the cinematographer, but it's all mashed together with a laziness and cynicism that easily makes it a contender for one of the worst modern blockbusters I have seen in the past few years (and, yes, that includes every non-Spidey-but-Spideyverse film from Sony).

2/10

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Love Hurts (2025)

On the one hand, it's unfair to dismiss a film because it compares unfavourably to another film it wasn't necessarily trying to compete with. On the other hand, I ended up watching Love Hurts soon after watching Fight Or Flight, and it was immediately obvious that the latter film seemed to get everything right that this film, sadly, gets wrong.

Ke Huy Quan plays a realtor, Marvin Gable, who seems very content with his life. He's a mild and cheery fellow, happy to have left behind a life that was surprisingly stuffed full of violence and death. But that life won't stay left behind, and Marvin finds his life upended when Rose Carlisle (Ariana DeBose) reappears. This leads to Marvin being hunted down by a number of killers employed by his brother, Alvin (Daniel Wu), which makes it very difficult for him to keep his past a secret.

I am not surprised that this is the first film directed by Jonathan Eusebio. I am also not surprised that writers Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore don't really have many other features of note to their name. That's the main feeling you get when watching Love Hurts, it's a film made by people ready to make the most of a talented stunt team in the hopes of distracting viewers from a very weak and very familiar plot. It's a shame that the stunt team didn't get the memo. 

There's a lot here to appreciate, and I am never going to claim that I could do even a quarter of the physical stuff that many of these performers can do, but Love Hurts is disappointingly repetitive and unimaginative when it should have been an opportunity for everyone to bring some crazy ideas to the table and see how many gags could be squeezed into every main action sequence. As many others said before I even saw this, Love Hurts is a film that you end up willing to do better for most of the runtime. And that's mainly down to Quan in the lead role.

Trying to make the most of his recent success and praise, Quan is someone who is very easy to like. He puts himself across as very sweet and unassuming, and he has a fantastic athleticism that deserves to be showcased in front of the camera. DeBose carries herself through the film with the kind of carefree and cool presence that makes the connection between the leads easy enough to believe in. As for the villains, they're a good mix of real menace (Wu) and quirky killers (Marshawn Lynch, André Eriksen, Cam Gigandet, and Mustafa Shakir). Lio Tipton also has a supporting role, playing a colleague who ends up caught up in the madness unfolding around our hero, but the way that the movie pushes her closer to the character played by Shakir is just far too silly. And it would be remiss not to mention the cameo from Sean Astin, which leads to a genuinely sweet and moving payoff, thanks to the baggage brought to the film by the shared legacy that he and Quan have as lifelong Goonies.

I liked Love Hurts, but I felt as if I had to work hard to like it in spite of itself. It's a mess, it's disappointingly unable to maintain any decent energy or momentum, and many of the fights feel like the same moves being used over and over again (not saying they ARE that way, but they feel like it). Maybe everyone can put their heads together and have another go at making something worthier of Quan's time and energy.

6/10

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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

I hope you have already heard from other people raving about just how good Everything Everywhere All At Once is. That will make up for my own poor attempt to convince you to see it. Because it is an easier film to experience than to discuss, but it is a strong contender for film of the year (and, arguably, a strong contender already for film of the decade). It isn’t for the faint of heart though, and I am sure that many casual film fans will be put off by the unrelenting craziness of it all.

Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Wang, a woman who is at a low ebb. She runs a launderette with her husband (Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan), and both a full tax audit and possible divorce looms on her horizon. She also struggles to find a strong connection with her daughter (Joy, played by Stephanie Hsu), and uses her critical father (James Hong) as an excuse to avoid non-judgemental acceptance of Joy’s lesbianism. Evelyn doesn’t mean to be hurtful, she is just projecting from her own life experience. And here’s where things get complicated. It turns out that there are an infinite number of multiverses, and Evelyn is suddenly asked to harness the power of various incarnations of herself in order to protect them. This is done by acting in the most illogical way, allowing the “jump” to the access point, and absorbing the skillset from the person in the alternative timeline. Why is Evelyn required to do this? Someone is out to destroy every timeline, and Evelyn may be the only one able to stop them.

I know, trust me, that the paragraph above is a bit dense and odd. It’s also a decent enough summary of the opening 15-20 minutes of this movie. All you need to know is delivered in one main info-dump, spoken by Ke Huy Quan, and other details are noted as everything becomes more action-packed.

Written and directed by Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), this is a tour de force of consistently inventive and astonishing film-making. The editing alone is an absolute masterclass (I don’t often namecheck editors, just because I focus on the “front of house team” most of the time, but Paul Rogers definitely warrants a mention here), but the script and direction lead to an end product so brilliant that it will be hard for Daniels to top this. In fact, it could be argued that it will be hard for anyone to top this. 

They help themselves greatly with the casting. Yeoh is someone who film fans should have been in love with for years already. If that isn’t the case, change it now. She has always been a massive talent and this gives her the role(s) of her life. Showing so much range, in terms of the characters portrayed and her ability to move from comedy to action to heartfelt emotional moments, Yeoh is one important chamber of the heart of the movie. Quan is another important chamber, and I cannot think of a recent movie moment that has made me happier than the sequence in which he beats up some security guards with a small fanny pack. He makes for a sad, tired, figure in many other scenes, but he also provides a reserve of strength that others use, and it is all conveyed with a quiet, unassuming, performance that is absolutely pitch perfect. Hsu is yet another chamber, and she gets to move between massive highs and massive lows with her character. She is dreadfully unhappy in a way that feels like every “lost” teen ever, but also symbolises unfulfilled potential and dashed hopes just as much as anyone else onscreen. The fourth chamber, ensuring the strong heartbeat that powers the whole film, is made up of both Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis, the former playing the formidable tax auditor. Both are painted as villains at different times, both are much more than that, and both do their bit to ensure that there is not one weak link in the lead acting chain. In an ideal world this would lead to every award everywhere all at once. Maybe in another universe.

There are great action scenes, great moments of absurd humour (highlights include googly eyes, a riff on Ratatouille, and a universe in which people have somehow evolved to have hotdogs for fingers), and simply great moments that will have you grinning from ear to ear. Did I keep track of the timelines and the science? Not quite. Do I think it all fits perfectly together? Not quite. But it is, like a number of other movies, something so magnificent that one or two minor quibbles don’t stop it from feeling perfect. And it is worth noting that, aside from the fighting and silliness, pushing the brain-melting science out of the way, this is a film about love and support. It is important that you have people who give you that love and support, and it is equally important that you pass that same love and support along to those you care about.

Although I know many people who would absolutely hate this, I consider it unmissable. And those who cannot enjoy the full experience it delivers are, quite frankly, missing out.

10/10

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