Back to the world of small, plastic, animated building blocks, where imagination rules and the fourth wall is occasionally bumped, elbowed and/or run straight through like a freshly-wiped sliding glass door. I guess I'm in the minority here, but from my POV this played as a sequel that wasn't as fresh, nor as inspired, as the original.
In the first film, half the fun came from learning the rules of the world, admiring a string of wildly different settings and identifying the slew of cheeky, energetic celebrity cameos in a long parade of licensed characters. Every one of those elements is clamped down, if not outright eliminated, in the follow-up. It's funny, it's entertaining, there's a lot of winks for the parents and silly slapstick bits for the kids, but as a whole it's much more forced and cramped. Although we spend time exploring new galaxies, meeting alien queens and defending post-apocalyptic landscapes, the universe is smaller and far less diverse. The same voice actors reprise the same roles for the same cameos, but this time it's more of an obligation and less of a spontaneous surprise. "I know that guy!" becomes "I remember that guy."
I don't want to sound too harsh here, because the story does represent a logical continuation of simmering themes that were present in the original, and the music is once again a major highlight, but it's not a great sign when the film's most clever, imaginative scene takes place during the credits. Maybe a growing pain for the franchise; there's still plenty of fertile ground here, but it's going to take a little more effort to re-bottle that jolt of lightning.
In the first film, half the fun came from learning the rules of the world, admiring a string of wildly different settings and identifying the slew of cheeky, energetic celebrity cameos in a long parade of licensed characters. Every one of those elements is clamped down, if not outright eliminated, in the follow-up. It's funny, it's entertaining, there's a lot of winks for the parents and silly slapstick bits for the kids, but as a whole it's much more forced and cramped. Although we spend time exploring new galaxies, meeting alien queens and defending post-apocalyptic landscapes, the universe is smaller and far less diverse. The same voice actors reprise the same roles for the same cameos, but this time it's more of an obligation and less of a spontaneous surprise. "I know that guy!" becomes "I remember that guy."
I don't want to sound too harsh here, because the story does represent a logical continuation of simmering themes that were present in the original, and the music is once again a major highlight, but it's not a great sign when the film's most clever, imaginative scene takes place during the credits. Maybe a growing pain for the franchise; there's still plenty of fertile ground here, but it's going to take a little more effort to re-bottle that jolt of lightning.