‘Zootopia 2’ review: Disney’s animal kingdom is back in funny, but lesser sequel

“Zootopia” has finally crawled out of hibernation.

It’s been nine long years since Disney’s first animal metropolis movie about the unlikely buddy cop duo of a fox and rabbit hit theaters back in 2016.

The original fans are now dissecting frogs.

Yet clever-as-ever “Zooptopia 2” doesn’t feel at all like three presidents have held office between the two films. It glides in gracefully as a gazelle.

That’s not to say the sequel, directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard, is the glorious revelation that the last movie was. Hardly an “Elephant Strikes Back.” It’s more along the lines of a perfectly enjoyable TV police procedural; the season finale of “Claw and Order.”

We’ve met everybody and gotten a guided tour of town. Now it’s down to business.

These days Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin), Zootopia’s first-ever bunny cop, and her partner Nick (Jason Bateman), a cavalier fox who lives up to his sneaky species’ reputation, are pretty much Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in “Rush Hour” — celebrated but annoying to their coworkers.

During the city’s centennial festivities, the sloppy duo gets accosted by a snake aptly named Gary De’Snake (Key Huy Quan).

In an amusing casting move, Quan, who got his start as little Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” is now playing Indy’s least favorite creature.

And Mr. Nice Guy tries to give those scary, scaly noodles an image rehab.The actor makes his fanged, slimy, limbless viper seem downright cuddly. Although I wasn’t convinced by his sales pitch.

“Snakes aren’t the bad guys,” he announces. “We never hurt anyone!”

Tell that to Anaconda and the Snakes on the Plane.

Apparently, reptiles in Zootopia are confined to ghettos and drown their sorrows at speakeasies — two things that aren’t easy to speak to your kids about.

Slithering types, we learn, actually invented the groundbreaking technology that allows this unique land to control the weather to suit the entire animal kingdom.

But an influential family of conniving cats, the Lynxleys, took credit and banished the poor pythons underground a la St. Patrick.

So, Nick and Judy set out through deserts, tundra and an outdoor festival called Burning Mammal to right a historical wrong.

What’s best and most consistent about “2” is how flippin’ funny it is.

A Long Island-sounding character taunting Nick invokes an old viral song: “What does the fox say? You suck!”

There is a version of Hannibal Lecter from “The Silence of the Lambs” portrayed as an actual lamb.

Another new addition is a pair of striped meatheads on the force called the Ze-bros. And a supervisor calmly tells a hog officer, “That’ll do, pig.”

Flash the hilarious sloth is back, too, as is Mr. Big, the little rodent Don Corleone.

There was one beast I’d like to muzzle, though.

She’s an obnoxious podcaster named Nibbles Maplestick (Fortune Feimster), a beaver who chomps through everyone with her loud personality. 

But one man’s annoyance is some kid’s Christmas list.

And Goodwin and Bateman’s Judy and Nick still have great chemistry nearly a decade on. Maybe a little too much. It’s kinda weird to see a CGI fox and rabbit have such will-they-won’t-they tension.

But fear not. The Disney movie’s still rated PG. They don’t do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.