Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #64: Zootopia 2

My friends, I ask you to consider a simple hypothetical:

Maybe we’re the assholes?

This meme did the rounds last year after Pixar’s Elio crashed and burned and someone at Disney had gotten into the hard liquor and had some feelings they needed to express. And while I do believe that 90% of the time creators blaming the audience for the failure of their project is the mark of a talentless hack so high off their own farts that they genuinely believe that the only way anyone could dislike their output is if there was something morally wrong with them…

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

…you know what? I gotta give them this one. And I can say that, because I am actually one of the two people who saw Elio (Micro-Mouse is the other one). Elio is not a perfect film and I probably won’t watch it again. But it was charming, well animated, sincere and, yes, not a retread or rehash or cynical nostalgia bait cash grab and we all just left it to die on the road like a leper.

It’s one thing for Disney to complain that we didn’t give them a participation trophy for Strange World or Wish. When we said “we want original animated films”, the rider “…that aren’t absolute bobbins” should have been taken as read.

But with Elio, they showed up. They gave us what we said we wanted. Aaaaaand it turns out we were a bunch of lying hoors because we instead gave a billions dollars to this:

I’m acknowledging this exists. Enjoy it while it lasts because this is the only time.

Then again, this year saw the hugely succesful release of Hoppers, which was not merely good like Elio but genuinely excellent with a truly original premise, animation that actually innovates and shakes up the old Pixar house style and some great comedy. Well, I say “original”. Clearly they stole wholesale from Don’t Trust Fish.

But it doesn’t matter! Because the next Hoppers might end up like Elio. We can’t be trusted, and once you’ve proven you can’t be trusted no one will ever deal with you because they know you’ll never negotiate in good faith and now somehow fucking Iran has the world’s economy by the goddamn short-hairs.

I mean, that’s how we get Zootopia 2.

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Indie Awards and New Podcast Episode

Hey everyone! First of all, I know, I know, I know. If this blog was any more abandoned and neglected I’d be getting visits from magical Christmas snow-men warning me to change my ways before my blog grows up and doesn’t even remember who I am. I promise I’ll update more regularly and play catch with you all once this draft of the new novel is finished. You and me, just tossing the ol’ baseball around. Whaddya say, champ?

In other news. Don’t Trust Fish won Best Picture Book at the Indies Choice Book Awards and ~~holy shit this one actually has a cash prize~~ I am absolutely delighted and humbled at this recognition.

And! The next episode of Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia is finally up where we talk about the bizarre, disturbing and occasionally brilliant Australian kid’s show Round The Twist. Sorry about the wait folks, we were hit with multiple medical emergencies.

“I’m going to give you one last chance to stop acting like Nazi stormtroopers.”

Between the Superman radio series’ colossal decade-long run, the Fleischer cartoons and two multi-part film serials, I have to wonder if audiences in 1951 were starting to experience superhero fatigue. Remember how people complained when we got the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk so soon after Eric Bana’s? That at least was a five year gap. Kirk Alyn had barely flown offscreen before George Reeves stepped into his bright red boots.

Now, you might be a little confused as to why I’m covering this. If I’m only doing the theatrical live action Superman movies, what is George Reeves doing here? Didn’t he play Superman on TV? Indeed he did. Reeves, as well as being the reason why everyone gets Christopher Reeve’s name wrong, was the star of The Adventures of Superman which ran for a mighty impressive 106 episodes in the fifties. However, this movie served as a pilot of sorts for the TV show and was released in theatres. Alyn was apparently offered the chance to return to the role but he declined for two reasons. One, like many movie actors at the time he thought that TV was a passing fad (incorrect) and two, he worried that being typecast as Superman would kill his acting career stone dead (sadly, right on the money).

And so, the mantle passed to George Reeves, a military veteran and B-movie player whose acting career prior to becoming Clark Kent had deteriorated to the point that he’d been forced to take work digging cesspools just to make ends meet. Reeves was a fascinating and admirable man who deserved so much better than his tragic and mysterious death. But, if nothing else, he was for decades THE definitive onscreen Superman.

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From sea to shining sea

Two weeks, 20,000 kilometres, 4 countries. There are trips and there are TRIPS and my contribution to the family collection of fridge magnets has been robust and muscular.

Late in February I took part in the Whole Wide World book tour organised by Children’s Books Ireland and Laureate na n-Óg Patricia Forde to visit schools across Northern Ireland. And once that was over, I immediately began a ten day book tour of North America. Why did I agree to do those two things so close together?

Anyway, horrendous “I’m pretty sure the devil is hiding in the wallpaper” level jet lag not withstanding, this was an absolutely incredible journey.

For starters, I finally got to meet Dan Santat who, despite the fact that we made a bestselling book together, had never actually been in the same room before. It’s always a little risky to meet someone for the first time and then spend almost a fortnight in close proximity but, as we explained to many schoolchildren, it’s really the only way to make friends in your forties. Seriously though, Dan is absolute gem of a human being and it was wonderful to have him as a guide through his amazing, often bewildering country.

We started in Chicago, headed to Austin and then San Antonio, then up to Colorado, over to Seattle, down to San Juan California and then up to Vancouver visiting a total of 16 schools and bookstores.

We actually got to meet the Cat in the Hat. Total prick.

Everywhere we went I was stunned by the generosity and the enthusiasm and the gosh-darned decency of everyone that we met.

I will treasure this 3D printed Jeff for the rest of my days.

This trip taught, or re-taught me that kids are kids the world over. They have the same hunger for knowledge, the same wonderfully mad sense of humour, the same mixture of innocence and great wisdom. Meeting these children, and the librarians and the teachers who work themselves to the bone on their behalf because they love them and understand how important they are has made me more optimistic than I have been for a while.

Naive of me to think, perhaps, but I think y’all are going to be alright.

K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025)

Heeeeey it’s me, Unshaved Mouse, your favourite writer/blogger who overpromises because he’s terrified of disappointing people and ends up taking on WAAAAY too many writing projects and then spirals and completely burns out!

So, as you all know I’m currently preparing for my first North American book tour at the end of this month while also facing a huge quivering mass of deadlines so this review is going to be shorter than the queues for Melania.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I do have things to say about this movie.

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We’re going on tour!

Big news!

At the end of the month I’ll be embarking on an epic, two week book tour of North America with my colleague in anti-piscine propaganda Dan Santat! We’ll be doing readings in schools across the US and Canada as well as some public events and I’d love to see you there!

Here’s the schedule

Fri 27th February, 6pm

Anderson’s Bookshop, Downers Grove, Illinois

TICKETS HERE: https://www.eventcombo.com/e/Author-Event-with-Neil-Sharpson–Dan-SantatDont-Trust-Fish-78183

Sun March 1st, 11 am

Bookpeople, Austin, Texas

TICKETS HERE: https://bookpeople.com/event/2026-03-01/special-author-storytime-neil-sharpson-and-dan-santat

Sat March 7th, 11.30 am

Hicklebee’s Bookstore, San Jose, California

TICKETS HERE: https://hicklebees.com/event/2026-03-07/neil-sharpson-dan-santat-dont-trust-fish

Sunday, March 8th, 1pm

Langley, British Columbia, Canada

TICKETS HERE: https://ticketscene.ca/events/59235/

“Everyone keeps telling me how my story is supposed to go. Nah. Imma do my own thing.”

Sometimes, less is more. This is true with most things, but it’s especially true with writing. While there are definitely times when it’s fun to get fancy or even downright purple with your prose, the real masters know that when you want a piece of writing that cuts a reader right to the bone and leaves them wondering what the hell you just did to them, you keep it simple. Take, for example, the opening monologue of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Let’s do things differently this time… SO differently.

His name is Miles Morales.

He was bitten by a radioactive spider.

And he’s not the only one.

He hasn’t always had it easy.

And he’s not the only one.

Now he’s on his own.

And he’s not the only one.

You think you know the rest.

You don’t.

I thought I knew the rest.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t want to hurt him.

But I did.

And he’s not the only one

On paper the prose seems incredibly basic. But there is a cadence to it, and a power that comes from the constant repetition. It’s like a drum beat, growing in intensity. And, when given to an actor like Hailee Steinfeld who absolutely knows how to wring every ounce of emotion out of it?

Which is a weird point to start a review of this film with, because while less is sometimes more, more is also sometimes more. And Across the Spider-Verse is one of the greatest arguments for cinematic maximalism since Ben Hur.

This movie is HUGE. It boasts the largest animation team of any cartoon in history. It has a cast of hundreds of characters and stretches across six universe each with their own distinct artistic style. It is a truly epic work, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of animation as a medium.

And, fittingly, even its production problems were epic in scope. A writer’s strike. A global pandemic. Whatever the hell happened to Shameik Moore. And, of course, the now notorious levels of crunch and overwork that the animators were subjected to. I won’t say Spider-Verse 2’s doctrine of “biggest of all time” extended to the suffering meted out to those who worked on it because North Korea produces animation and they probably have that particular category locked up but STILL. It’s definitely something that shouldn’t be forgotten.

I mean, I’ll still watch it but I still watch The Shining and that movie damn near killed Shelley Duvall, you come to me for movie reviews, not moral guidance.

Jesus, I hope you don’t come to me for moral guidance.

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“If you still refuse to deal with me after that? I’ll reduce your city to dust.”

Considering the character kickstarted the comic-book superhero genre (asterisk, asterisk) Superman has always been the comic book character least beholden to that medium. In 2025, while it is accurate to call Superman a “comic book character”, it’s also incredibly reductive. Superman is more like Santa Claus. He doesn’t belong to one medium, he simply is. And, unlike almost every other comic book character, I would argue that virtually all of his most important and iconic stories took place outside of the medium of comics. Very early on, Superman expanded beyond the panels of the comic book page and appeared in radio dramas, newspaper strips, novels, cartoons, movie serials and TV shows, to the point that a vast majority of Superman fans aren’t even regular comic book readers.

Consider this: The years between the end of the second world war and the start of the sixties was marked by the near collapse of the superhero genre in comics. And yet Superman not only survived the implosion of the genre he’d birthed, in the fifties he was bigger than he’d ever been, as The Adventures of Superman became one of the first major hits of the television era. But we’re not there yet.

Before he get to George Reeves, we must see out the Kirk Alyn era in style. I won’t lie, I was a little apprehensive approaching 1950’s Atom Man versus Superman. Superman 1948 was a very pleasant surprise but crappy sequels aren’t a recent Hollywood invention and the very few reviews I was able to find (this is, almost certainly, the most obscure Superman movie to ever be put on the big screen) agreed that it was inferior to the first one. There was also the fact that serials from the fifties, the last dying gasp of the medium, are notoriously cheap and ropy.

So colour me shocked that I actually prefer Atom Man versus Superman to its predecessor.

Like, by a lot.

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Yeah, that was okay.

In last year’s wrap-up I noted that 2025 was a big important sounding year for doing big things and I don’t want to brag…

Like, I genuinely don’t want to brag. I’m Irish Catholic, I’m brag intolerant. But fine, yeah, this was a REALLY big year for me. Without a doubt my most successful year since becoming a full time writer.

For starters, my third novel, The Burial Tide was released and was selected by the New York Public Library not only as their second best horror book of the year but one of their 20 best books of 2025.

But let’s not beat about the bush. The real star of the show this year was Don’t Trust Fish, my first picture book illustrated by the incomparable Dan Santat which was…deep breath.

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Son of the White Mare (1981)

I will probably never watch this movie again.

Not because it is bad.

Because the experience of watching Son of the White Mare again could never top the experience of watching it for the first time.

And you know what’s crazy? This is…drumroll please…my final reader’s request. And the reason I left this one to last was because the requester simply asked me to review “something Eastern European” and I just chose this because it looked interesting. I picked this one almost at random.

And it ended up being…well, we’ll get to that.

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