Zootopia: a review.

Or: Pick your favorite animal –the movie.

Everybody has a favorite animal. Mine happens to be a polar bear. Now, I’ve always hated the comparison: "a real tiger!". When referring to somebody persistent. I mean, if you can outrun a tiger for about three minutes the beasty will give up. Yet, a polar bear will chase you for days. So why don't people say a: "real polar bear"?

Anyway, Disney's Zootopia manages to use this stereotyping to tell a thrilling story that -like Thomas More's original novel- doesn't shy away to seep some reality into an utopian world where fable-esq predators and prey live in harmony.

The story
A bunny named Judy Hops (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the first bunny officer on the central police force of Zootropolis. A police force comprised of big (big!) animals like elephants and rhino’s. Sufficient to say she has to prove herself. With the help of a hustler fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) she takes on the case of finding a missing otter. 

If there's one movie this year that should have the sticker made in 2016 on it it’s Zootopia. It is so keyed into the current world we live in it's almost like the producers formed the political climate to fit this movie instead of the other way around.

Not in my backyard, racism, discrimination, political correctness, fear, political games, feminism, class system, stereotypes, xenophobia, actual terrorism, heck- even bootlegging. Just to name a few.

Every subject that plagues the news today seems to make an appearance. And -obviously- since it concerns animals it doesn't hurt that much.

Let's be honest. The stereotype of wolves howling. If you even think of a human equivalent you are already knee-deep in the muddy waters of racism. Here, because it's a cartoon, it's all fine.

I was actually rather shocked to see how close this childrens’ movie dared to steer near the real world problems. And I’m still left wondering how many of the themes I saw in this pictures will be picked up by the intended audience. But I certainly applaud it. Movies, after all, always tell two stories: the main story, and the story of the time the movie was made in. 

Bunny to the rescue
The story -as we expect from Disney- is simplicity itself. A coat rack for both a thrilling buddy crime story and a parody. However, like Frozen a few years back it's muddled a bit in the good sense.

No more: guy meet's girl in a perfect world with only one nasty villain. No the world is imperfect and the villain is unknown for most of the time. Just as it should be, a lot closer to the real world.

Yes, the moral of the story: ‘be who you want to be – not who society forces you to be’ is repeated time and again in this movie. But Zooptopia doesn’t shy away to add some footnotes to this black-and-white statement. For instance the (hilarious) fact that a bat can never become an elephant no matter how hard it wishes to be. This makes it a better movie. Yes the morality tale is still there and Disney certainly hasn’t forgotten its educational prowess, but also embraces the complexity of the real world.

Nor their commercial goals. I bet the toyshops are going to be stuffed with stuffed toys.

Bunny in trouble
Another good example of this complexity (again like Frozen and Big Hero 6 before it) is that the main villain is unknown for a good time. Like any classic buddy cop film there’s a real sense of who-dun-it with the classic fourth act reveal. Pretty much around the Breaking Bad-reference should be the moment the audience cracks the case. Which –again- is something completely different from Disney movies of the past. We knew, back then, from the moment we saw her that Maleficent was one evil crone. Now she has her own movie. Times change and Disney changes with it.

Bunny immersed

Thankfully -like that wonderful scene of Pinocchio going to school for the first day- so too has Zootopia so much to see. Like the political 2016-sticker mentioned above; this movie can also wear the technological sticker of 2016 with pride.

This is a movie to watch frame-by-frame on blu-ray because there are so many little things hidden in the background.

The creative department went absolutely (pun intended) wild. Which, I think, is best explained by the thought and planning that went into this movie.
‘How to put a polar bear and a wildebeest in the same city?’
Answer: By creating several districts. One for ice, one for savannah.
This thought process shows on the screen. When you sit down for zootopia you can actually ‘feel’ that someone has taken the time to think about the traffic regulations between the car of an elephant and the car of a mouse. It’s this attention to detail that makes zootopia such a comfortable ride.

Which is great because –to be a tad negative here – the directing isn’t that original. The scenes look good on camera but hardly ever does the movie utilize the full potential of the digital camera. It’s like zootopia tried to mimic the cop movies from the ‘1980s –which were known for the action and fast-talking characters but not the creative cinematography. But it doesn’t truly matter because the movie shows what it needs to show. I just feel that it could be even better.

To finish with the acting. That’s simple; the acting is perfectly fine. But after eighty years of cartoon voice acting the craft has pretty much been perfected. I can't readily think of a animated movie in which the voice-acting was bad. Maybe the character was underwritten, or a wrong voice type chosen*. But never unbelievable bad (or 'missed the lip synch' bad for that matter). So the acting is perfect and -to be honest- it is fun to imagine Ginnifer Goodwin jumping around in her recording booth as a feisty bunny.

I do remember that awkward ‘hello-just-met-you-now-lets-sing-a-lengthy-song-about-the-fact-that-I’m-blind’-bit in Quest for Camelot. But even here the acting was fine. The sudden inclusion of this song was what went wrong.