Another incredible achievement for animation. Everything about this is more ambitious than _Into the Spider-verse_. To start off, I love that the script is in no way interested in repeating the same beats as the first film. It's a true multiverse story that doesn't use the concept as a cheap, corporate gimmick. The comedy is once again razor sharp, but there's a deeper emotional underpinning to this film as well. In fact, the film is confident enough to take an entire hour to ensure everything is set-up properly, before it throws the viewer into the new adventure. Every new character is well developed and adds a different (stylistic) flavor to the film. The casting is great, they continuously pick interesting actors with distinct, expressive voices. Visually it blows every other animated film out of the water, there are so many different animation styles and it still feels cohesive. Even the action sequences are very well put together, there's not a moment where it becomes messy or turns into sensory overload. Yet despite all of that, I still prefer the first movie. A small issue I had with the first film was the use of licensed music, and that continues to be a problem. I like Pemberton's score a lot, but the songs are once again just a bunch of bland pop rap and trap. It's not like there's a shortage of great (popular) hiphop from the east coast, so I don't understand why a movie that's so ahead of the curve in almost every way would settle for something that commercial. And that's not the only area where you can see some signs of minor artistic cheapening. For example, while you can tell that the creators tried to integrate some of the cameos and references as naturally as possible, they still end up feeling tasteless and unnecessary. It's Sony making sure the normies receive their shot of dopamine, which is understandable, but it doesn't fit the very high artistic bar these movies set for themselves. Also, some of the exposition recaps could've easily been removed. Overall, I thought this was great and it confidently sets the stage for these films being among the best trilogies of all time.

8/10