Korea, Canada · 2017
Rated PG · 1h 31m
Director Cal Brunker
Starring Will Arnett, Maya Rudolph, Bobby Cannavale, Bobby Moynihan
Genre Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family
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Surly the squirrel and his furry friends learn of the crooked mayor of Oakton's plan to demolish Liberty Park and replace it with a theme park. As noisy construction descends upon the park, Surly and his crew must join forces with Mr. Feng, a sweet yet dangerous mouse, to take down the mayor and take back their home.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
Inventive and vibrant action sequences boasting exceptional 3-D effects and inspired voice casting (including Jackie Chan as a warrior mouse and Peter Stormare as a deranged exterminator) help to elevate this to something better than vaporous.
While shoving big messages inside animated offerings isn’t a new concept by any stretch of the imagination, The Nut Job 2 is uncomfortable with its most ambitious concepts, bookending them with gross-out nonsense that doesn’t seem engineered to appeal to anyone.
Slant Magazine by Keith Watson
Though it may clear the low bar set by the first film, The Nut Job 2 still suffers from many of the same problems.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
Colorful, kid-friendly, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. ’Nuff said.
The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen
While that let’s-band-together-and-save-the-park setup clearly isn’t the freshest acorn on the tree, director and co-writer Cal Brunker (2013’s Escape From Planet Earth) at least manages to keep all the ensuing chaos at a reasonably brisk clip. Drawing similarly energetic performances from his voice cast is another matter.
The summer of inessential animation continues with this very middling sequel to 2014’s semi-forgotten squirrel-based timekiller.
Paste Magazine by Oktay Ege Kozak
The Nut Job 2 actually contains some impressive animation, with photorealistic backgrounds and detailed fur dynamics on the characters, but that makes it an even bigger tragedy, since we know that untold hours were spent by artists in service of a product that even the least discerning child would find tired and useless.
As an animated entertainment, The Nut Job 2 lacks several key factors: memorable characters, a fun story, jokes that will appeal to adults as well as little kids. But one thing it does not lack is visual momentum.
The one gag that works is probably a little racist, or at least racially touchy. Jackie Chan voices the lead mouse in a sea of martial artist mice who beat the purple out of Surly any time he ventures into Chinatown.
It didn’t take long for this fleet-footed sequel, spry and charming, to win me over.
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