Tag Archives: Ke Huy Quan

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Happy Holidays, Ya Filthy Animals

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Zootopia 2

by Hope Madden

It’s been a decade since Disney rewrote their longstanding history of rocking no boats when the delightfully fearless Zootopia asked its audience to confront our own biases and recognize the way we are programmed to fear the weak to benefit the powerful.

Animators Jared Bush and Byron Howard maybe looked around and noticed certain themes trending again. Zootopia 2, which both direct and Bush writes solo this time, benefits from the same fantastic casting, same visual splendor, same wit as their 2016 Oscar winner. But Bush’s writing burns a little more brightly with anger this time, however charmingly packaged.

Bunny cop Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her fox partner, Nick Wilde (Jason Batemen), will not content themselves to sitting on the sidelines as rookies when there are real crimes to investigate. Judy believes the weird material she found at the scene of a smuggling crime is actually the shed skin of a snake—and reptiles are banned from Zootopia! They’re weird and dangerous! Just ask the powerful land baron heirs of generational wealth, the Lynxleys!

Do you know how to immediately convince children and adults alike that Gary the heat-sensitive pit viper is, indeed, no threat all? Besides naming him Gary? Cast Ke Huy Quan, whose performance, even when it’s only vocal, sings of harmlessness.

Is Gary being framed? Can conspiracy-seeking podcasting beaver Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster, hilarious) help in the investigation? Can Judy and Nick’s friendship survive another big case? Is any of this worth dying for?

Boy, that last one’s a big question for a kid’s movie, but Zootopia 2 is committed to asking big questions. It’s equally committed to hilarious sight gags (Hungry Hungry Hippo and Ratatoullie were battling for my favorite, but then they brought out the hedge maze). So it’s a good balance.

Bush’s plot is a little complicated for the youngest viewers, and the film takes a while to really find its groove. But it’s also shockingly relevant and sometimes powerfully emotional. Plus, Patrick Warburton as a vainglorious blond show horse movie star turned mayor is a hoot.

It’s great to see a family film that reminds kids (and adults) that bullies are often the people with the most money, and that the bully is always the problem. Zootopia 2 may not be the utter revelation of the original, but it is an excellent sequel and a tale worth telling.

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All the Small Things

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

by Hope Madden

The Daniels do not make ordinary films. In fact, they tend to make extraordinary films. While their charming 2016 fantasy Swiss Army Man slipped toward sentimentality, Daniel Scheinert’s remarkable 2019 solo follow up The Death of Dick Long did not.

Nope.

Co-director Dan Kwan and his brand of sweet-natured lunacy are back for the duo’s big, big new effort Everything Everywhere All at Once. The result is an endlessly engaging, funny, tender, surprising, touching maelstrom of activity and emotion.

Michelle Yeoh is Evelyn Wang, and today is not her day. She has to meet an IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis, priceless) about the lien on the coin laundromat she owns with her “silly husband” (Ke Huy Quan, nice to see you!). Meanwhile, she’s planning a big party for her judgmental curmudgeon of a father (James Hong, amazing). Instead of helping, her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is clearly planning to come out of the closet. Today, of all days.

And then the multiverse shows up.

This is a hard movie not to love.

The Daniels find the absurd in the ordinary, wring emotion from the most mundane moments, and manage to create something adorable even when really large items are entering or hanging from — I don’t even know how to end that sentence.

On an unrelated note (I swear to God, it’s unrelated), what they do with hotdogs is inspired.

At the heart of the insanity lurks a spot-on depiction of a midlife crisis, and Michelle Yeoh’s depiction of that crisis is revelatory. The formidable veteran brings physical prowess and nuanced drama to the screen, as you might expect. She’s also really funny, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to hold this manic experience together. Yeoh convinces while Evelyn arcs as no character has arced before.

Curtis, Hong, Hsu and Quan all provide excellent support in role after role after role. The real stars are the Daniels, though, who borrow and recast and repurpose without even once delivering something derivative.