Movie of the Week - Zootopia

Alexa: Disney consistently has a knack for telling stories that resonate with children and adults alike, and Zootopia is perhaps the best example of that in Disney’s Revival Era. On its surface it’s a cute, heartwarming mystery story starring animals, a tale of following your dreams and working together despite our inherent differences – and it succeeds in that regard alone. But its deeper layers make it a truly exceptional film, and a timely one. Zootopia unapologetically explores how complex the adult world is compared to our childhood dreams, and how the ways we choose to deal with that reality affect our lives. I think most people have been both a Judy and a Nick at some point in our lives, either bouncing back in the face of obstacles or succumbing to our fears when setbacks arise. It’s an effective piece of advice for kids – and an important reminder for adults – that the complications life deals us shouldn’t preclude us from following our passions.
Equally impactful is the film’s recurring theme of celebrating our differences and treating each other with compassion and empathy rather than judging each other based on preconceived notions about who we should be. It’s a more important lesson than ever, given how polarized our society is after a year defined by global turmoil and hostility. But Zootopia is more than a message movie. It’s so powerful because it’s as entertaining as it is intelligent, skillfully balancing humor and expert character development with whip-smart analysis about the modern world. It’s easily one of the best movies of 2016, and worthy of a place in the library of Disney classics.

Joel: The line between Walt Disney Animation and Pixar has become more and more blurred over the past decade or so. (By no coincidence that’s almost the exact point in time that John Lasseter was named the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Feature Animation in addition to Pixar) The setup of Zootopia is one that could have easily been a more forgettable movie or worse in the hands of a different studio, or even in the hands of the same studio during a different era. It’s a basic setup that immediately offers a million different directions that you can take it. It’s nothing more than “Look, animals, but also people ya know?” Something that hasn’t always worked out for Disney in the past. The last Disney movie to feather an all animal based cast was Chicken Little, one of the lowest points in the Walt Disney canon, and the one before that was Dinosaur. So what makes this movie one of the highlights of the current era of Disney Animation?
There are two extremes when it comes to animated animal movies. On one hand we have characters that are humans that just happen to be shaped like animals for no explained reason. (Disney’s Robin Hood is a good example of this.) On the other hand, there’s movie’s where the characters are animals. They have animal goals and interact with each other the way those animals would. (Bambi or The Lion King) Zootopia does something where it finds a way to hit somewhere in between these two extremes. These animals clearly have human characteristics. They wear clothing, have jobs, drive cars, but their animalistic nature and tendencies are still acknowledged and are in fact a fairly large aspect of the film with the Predator/Prey relationship being central to the story. It’s something that you would expect to come of clumsy, but instead is one of the reasons this movie works so well.
There’s just so much about the movie that works. You have a very interesting relationship between your two main characters Judy the rabbit and Nick the Fox. It’s a predator/prey relationship but at the same time it’s a police officer/criminal relationship. The movie takes this unique setup that it has to be able to explore both of these relationships by comparing them to one another. So much of what the movie builds on is being able to explore the relationships in a way that works because we as the audience are already familiar to what the relationships between the animals would be. It also serves as a shorthand for the movie to be able to create far more complex characters than you would normally find in a children’s movie. Nick especially is a character that is incredibly well developed. As the movie progresses we get to see a very gradual, but very deliberate reveal of an incredibly complex but well developed movie. This isn’t just a “Disney’s still got it” kind of situation. It’s a situation where Disney is putting out one of their best movies in years.

Chris: There's no denying that this is a good movie and I'm struggling to find a different way to say it that you haven't already read on this review. This movie brings a message of believing in everyone's inherent goodness as well as the dangers of painting with such a wide brush when describing a group of people (or animals in this case) no matter how good the intentions might be. It's a lesson that is remarkably relevant to the current global climate and it's one that sometimes seems to fall on deaf ears but I admire the optimism that's in Zootopia and it's a much needed optimism but it isn't blind optimism because there's a couple moments that would've been a perfectly "happily ever after" endpoint, one of which being the arrest of the lion mayor. Other Disney movies of the past would've left it there and cut straight to the weird Shakira concert credits. However, we saw that even in accomplishment, the hero's job still isn't done and some growth is still needed. The message might be a tad too on the nose for my personal liking but I appreciate this movie's willingness to dive that deep into a relevant message and I do understand that kids are going to watch this and that's probably why the message is so upfront. It's an important message that future generations needs to have embedded in them at an early age so I can appreciate their delivery mechanism.