I really liked the first one... it had a good mix of comedy and action, and somehow you actually root for a bunch of criminal animals, which shouldn't work but totally does. So I was curious what they'd do for the sequel, honestly not expecting much, and it delivered more than I thought it would.
This time the gang's trying to be "good guys" for real, they are actually trying to get normal jobs but nobody's giving them a chance. Which, fair, but also kind of the whole point of the movie. It's actually a decent angle for a kids' movie: saying you've changed is easy, getting people to believe it is the hard part. That's basically the emotional core running under all the chaos.
Then they get roped back into crime with this new crew, the Bad Girls.... Kitty Kat, Doom, and Pigtail. I was a little worried they'd just be thrown in because "sequel needs new characters," you know how that goes. But they've actually got chemistry with the OG gang, and the actresses voicing them (Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne, Maria Bakalova) bring a lot of personality, especially Doom. So it works better than expected. From there it just spirals into this massive heist involving some ridiculous tech and somehow ends up in space. Like, don't ask how, just go with it , and by that point the movie's already lost me on logic and I just let it happen.
Action-wise, it's a blast. Fast, chaotic, stuff blowing up, cars flying everywhere, disguises and escapes... basically a cartoon Ocean's Eleven and it still looks great even when everything's going nuts on screen, the animation's colorful and stylish without feeling like every other generic animated movie out right now.
Mr. Wolf is still the MVP for me, no contest. Sam Rockwell just nails that smooth-but-secretly-trying attitude. And there's something kind of relatable about a guy who wants to do the right thing but the old habits keep creeping back in because the wrong thing is just easier sometimes and we've all got a version of that, minus the actual crime part obviously. His thing with Diane Foxington is a nice touch too, even though it's not really the focus.
Where it kind of loses me a bit is the story gets way more complicated than it needs to be. Like at some point I was just sitting there like "how did we even get here." The first one felt tighter and more focused... this one feels like they kept asking "okay but what's bigger than that" until it got a little much.
They were lots of jokes, some genuinely funny, especially when the original crew's just bouncing off each other, but some are very much "made for 8-year-olds" with a LOT of fart jokes... But it's a family movie at the end of the day, so I can't be too mad about it because kids are gonna eat that stuff up.
I like this so much because it doesn't reinvent anything... it's just more of what worked before but bigger and louder...
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Rating: 80/100
