Review: Zootopia

Directed by: Byron Howard & Rich Moore

Written by: Jared Bush & Phil Johnston

Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt

Rating: [4.5/5]

Attempts to allegorically explore real-world issues serve as one of the greatest elements of fictional storytelling in the way it can repackage these ideas into a palatable film that even children can enjoy. It demonstrates when animation studios like Disney come to play with their best material as they do here with Zootopia. A film taking quite the risk in the way it plays with relation to race in our world, but pieces together a valiant effort to tie it all together in a package that most individuals can understand its inclusive message. 

On her way to the city of Zootopia where all types of animals live together, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) seeks to become the first rabbit on the police force. When she gets relegated to traffic duty, she takes on the opportunity to track down what has occurred with suddenly missing predators. To investigate, she enlists the help of a red fox named Nick (Jason Bateman) to get to the bottom of it. 

Judging others simply by the way they look has plagued society, especially when the judgment leads to more severe actions. For humans, it typically falls along skin color as history has displayed, but in the world of Zootopia, the divide occurs because of the difference between predators and prey. In the animal kingdom, there’s typically a divide between which animals operate as the predator and prey and this city serves as a utopia where all can come together but things become a bit tenuous when it appears some predators are acting out. On the surface, this allegory works out well and certainly proves palatable for young children trying to grasp the differences individuals have. The more one digs deeper the more this allegory gets a bit muddled making the comparison to animals not quite perfect but still one that has some merit. 

On the surface, you constantly have animals judged simply because of how they look and their overall perception. Judy, for example, immediately gets dismissed as someone who can be taken seriously because of her size and because typically rabbits are the ultimate prey animals. They harbor skills in running away rather than hopping towards something meaning she must overcome this perception in everything she does. This does not solely apply to her as it does to Nick a red fox who has the perception of dishonesty and being a trickster. It shows that even in a utopia that claims to have solved all of the societal issues, basic prejudice very much still exists displaying the work never ends. These prejudiced beliefs signify one thing when they are just thought of but when they make their way to potentially eliminating job opportunities for someone like Judy who wants to succeed on the police force or harming the self-esteem of someone like Nick where he believes he’s bred to be nothing more than a criminal, then the real problems arise. 

As one can imagine, this feature comes with plenty of animal jokes and puns in the way it tries to relate to the human world. None works better than the scene where Judy and Nick enter the DMV to get some information. Seeing the representation of DMV workers as sloths to a cartoonish degree is hilarious and how the scene plays out works wonderfully. When they make a joke about how long it takes to do anything in there they do not hold back. This happens in spades across many different elements of how their world mirrors ours and they serve their purpose in providing the humor it sought to elicit. 

With Judy and Nick, we have quite the duo to follow. Two animals try to overcome the stereotypes about them and prove everyone else wrong about their instincts or ability to accomplish the duties placed before them. They certainly build quite the chemistry with each other and form this buddy cop duo that makes any detective story worth watching. Judy plays by the rules while Nick serves as the renegade who’s not even a cop, but rather roped along due to blackmail strangely enough. Judy and Nick additionally have this back and forth between them where they represent the central issue plaguing the entire society where one of them operates as a prey animal and the other a predator. The way they can come together ultimately shows what is possible, especially with the fear-mongering that does take place when it comes to the predators vs prey that gets purported by bad actors. They are the lynchpin that holds the entire story together. 

Trying to swing for the fences while also providing some good baseline entertainment, Zootopia works its charms in trying to tackle prejudice in the world of animals. It certainly does not nail all aspects of what it seeks to present, especially in making a racial allegory but with what it nails down it does so in such an emphatic manner that does harbor appreciation from me. It packages these ideas in quite a fun way and provides us with characters that help represent the overall message of the story as we take our preconceived notions about these animals and allow them to inform how we view them when we watch their actions play out in the film. Truly an effort by Disney in their efforts to tell a story such as this one and they deserve the proper credit for doing so.