Directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore
Score: 7/10
There’s Something About Disney and Foxes...
It’s not often I’m able to get to a new movie on opening night. In fact, it might happen once every year or two. I don’t often have the desire to fight through the crowds, spend top dollar for theaters where I won’t feel cramped by a packed house, and stalk online ticket vendors in hopes of the worst seat in the house still being available. For Zootopia, though, I felt like it was worth it to make the effort. I even felt like it was worth the effort of breaking my hiatus to return to reviewing altogether.
This movie had me intrigued from the word “go”. The minimalist previews, the colorful world, even the idea that Disney would go back to their roots with a story utilizing anthropomorphized mammals; I liked it all. So, I have to admit that I was probably more excited for this movie than the nine-year-old I ended up seated next to in the theater was. Honestly, it felt like I was a kid again.
On the surface, Zootopia is a carbon-copy buddy cop comedy, in which the obligatory unlikely pair is made up of disparate animals instead of racial caricatures. The primary protagonist, a female rabbit named Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) wants desperately to be taken seriously as a cop, despite being vastly undersized and a token prey species in a work field dominated by hulking predators. Her trial-by-fire is to solve a missing persons mammals case (seriously though, no scalies or birds or anything?), but to do so she requires the help of a streetwise huckster fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) who wants nothing more than to be left alone and unthreatened to live on his wits. Yes, the puns almost do write themselves. The case gets solved, but solving it opens a much larger threat; one that almost drives the civilized society apart and pits prey against predator in a surreal reversal of the normal order.
The plot is bog-standard fare, right down to the see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away plot twist at the end, but we’re not here for the story. Zootopia sells itself in many other ways; from the vibrant art style and animation that cannily straddles the line between realistic and cartoony, to the voice acting that is both unexpected and engaging, to the vast worldbuilding that riffs on our world and the Disney canon at large in the same breath. Oh, and it lends itself to limitless puns, of course. It isn’t all just saccharides and light, either: Zootopia actually goes to some honestly dark places with some intense dramatic scenes. Honestly, the world of Zootopia is an almost perfect canvas: it’s open and offers total narrative freedom, and is familiar enough to our own world to be able to show itself as a mirror when necessary.
This last point might be where I pulled out the real meat of the story that exists. I’ve heard reviews that thought Zootopia was heavy-handed with an over-wrought “tolerance” metaphor, but I didn’t get anything like that. To be sure, the cast of characters is vibrant and varied, but they tend more toward archetypes rather than cliches, and none of the characters act or are viewed as anything outside of their species. Frankly, I think a metaphor that tried to pry open the doors of anything as nuanced as sexuality would have completely imploded (where it didn’t sail totally over the intended audience’s head entirely), so I’m glad the writers didn’t even try. Instead, I thought the movie alternated between a critique of gender norms in society and a look at the police/public tension that’s grown to endemic levels today. The prey tend towards the feminine aspects of personality (non-conflictory, passive, emotive, etc), and are expected to hold to their place in the world behind the predator species, who are the masculine jock archetype. But the predators are shown in turn to be equally sympathetic, and we see that a predator who tries to buck the societal expectations is mocked or outright bullied, so they’re forced into a norm-defined role. It’s actually a pretty good deconstruction of how our society often views the dichotomy between the feminine and the masculine, and how we can put people into boxes that don’t really define them very fully.
If that all seems a bit too deep for a kids’ movie, I wouldn’t worry too much. Much like Pixar’s prior (much under-loved, in my opinion) movie Monsters U, there’s a subtle aesop that’s both encouraging and refreshingly realistic at the same time. In Monsters U, the indirect message at the end of the movie is that your dream might end up requiring some hard work to come true, and that’s okay. In Zootopia, it’s the unexpectedly honest way Judy tells the audience that some dreams really are unreasonable in the specific details (not everyone can actually grow up to be an astronaut, after all), but your goals and passions can still be realized if you don’t give up on them—maybe even in a form you didn’t expect them to be fulfilled in.
In the long run, Zootopia won’t win any major awards, I’m sure. It might not even be remembered for long by its target audience—but I hope it isn’t. For me, who grew up on classic Disney fare, it seems like a blend of the old storytelling of Disney’s anthropomorphized movies of yore with the more rapid-fire storytelling and editing style of the modern cinema. It made me remember why I love talking-animal movies in the first place: because of the approachable style and shorthand characterization animal archetypes afford. It’s modern Disney, without being weighed down by Oscar-bait songs and multi-billion dollar advertising bonanzas trying desperately to disguise hack writing held together with nothing but duct tape and hope.
It’s just an enjoyable movie, and I love that. I’m actually looking forward to Zootopia becoming a bit of a franchise, because this world could explore just about any type of story that exists.
Acting: 8
Story: 6
Visuals: 8
Sound: 5
Enjoyment: 9
Overall Score: 7/10
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