Review: Zootopia
Animals are great for allegory. Their representative nature - the sneakiness of snakes, the sleepiness of sloths, the industriousness of ants - allow storytellers to get to the heart of their message quickly and in a way that is almost subconscious. We all know the characteristics of a rabbit or a fox, and we understand their relationship in nature. From there the allegory can build something else, using those creatures to set the stage and to distance the audience from the moral enough that it can sneak past their defenses. It’s the entire premise of fables - these morality stories operate on enough levels that we can absorb the moral without feeling lectured.
But the allegory can be a dangerous beast in its own right, especially as it grows complicated - or as it attempts to approach more complicated concepts. You need to be a master to control the seeming simplicity of telling a political story with barnyard animals; just ask George Orwell. That control seems to evade the filmmakers behind Disney’s Zootopia, a charming enough movie that finds itself knee deep in a metaphorical mess.
Judy Hopps was always what you might call a go-getter. You could even say she was an eager beaver, if that didn’t sound so offensive to less-industrious semiaquatic rodents. Her 200-plus brother and sister bunnies might have been more than content to stay down home on the farm. But Judy had bigger plans!
You see, animals have now evolved beyond all that useless “predator and prey” bloodlust of their past. Indeed, they’re all part of a very civilized and conversant society these days. So why shouldn’t a tiny bunny have the opportunity to be something like, say, a cop when she grows up? That’s right, a little puff of whiskers, feet and fluff called Judy Hopps has always had the lion-sized dream of joining the rhinos, buffaloes and moose on the police force.
So she signed up for the police academy. And while her limited scale, shall we say, made things a bit difficult, with a little extra hop-to-it-iveness the little rabbit bounded all the way to the top of her class. And right after graduation she was assigned the job of her dreams: She was to be the first bunny cop in the big city of Zootopia!
Of course, even that plum assignment had its share of frustrating toe stubs and tail tugs. Since she’s the first to benefit from Mayor Lionheart’s new mammal-inclusion initiative, well, the other cops on the force haven’t been all that welcoming. They look right over and past her.
Why, Captain Bogo barely growled in her direction long enough to assign her parking meter duty. He wouldn’t even consider her doing anything else. And Judy just knows she could be helpful in a big missing-animals case that everyone else is working on. But if it’s going to be parking meter duty, well, Judy will be the best parking meter cop you ever saw. They want 100 tickets handed out in a day? She’ll do 200! Before lunch! Then … maybe she can spend the afternoon, well, kinda lifting an ear in this direction or that.
She’ll keep a keen lookout for any slippery weasels or shifty foxes who might pass her way. Not that she’ll be species-profiling or anything. No sir. Judy has a way of sniffing things out, is all. And if there’s any back-alley beastie badness going on, she’ll find it. You’ll see.
On the surface it is a bright and delightful comedy about a cute, foot-thumping little bunny who won’t give up. She overcomes the biggest of bunny trail roadblocks to become exactly what she believes she was meant to be, while making lots of unlikely friends along the way. In other words, she stays true to herself and is kind to others. That’s as old-school a Disney theme as you’re gonna find.
But this good-vs.-evil tale set in a world of anthropomorphized animals is more that surface sweet. For the grown-ups it proffers a surprisingly hard-boiled (at least from a cartoon perspective) film noir detective story, featuring a cop and her CI (confidential informant for those of you who aren’t up on your gumshoe lingo) who endure each other and wade together through the mobbed-up underworld of shrews, polar bears and wolves, all in hopes of saving a city from a horrible and despicable wrong.
Because on top of all that, Mom and Dad will easily see that there is yet another layer here. This bouncy pic is designed to deliver a thump-the-pulpit sermon against any form of discrimination in our world. Zootopia’s particular brand of “species sensitivity” pushes onscreen critters—along with human moviegoers—to face up to their innate uncertainty (read: prejudices) about anyone not like them.
So far so good. But even when healthy tolerance peeks around the corner into the idea of accepting what people do (living as a nudist, for instance) and not just focusing on who or what they are (a particular body type or race), the movie seems to say that negative thinking still isn’t allowed.
Those are more carrots than you might expect to chew on while cabbing the kiddie crew home.
But the allegory can be a dangerous beast in its own right, especially as it grows complicated - or as it attempts to approach more complicated concepts. You need to be a master to control the seeming simplicity of telling a political story with barnyard animals; just ask George Orwell. That control seems to evade the filmmakers behind Disney’s Zootopia, a charming enough movie that finds itself knee deep in a metaphorical mess.
Judy Hopps was always what you might call a go-getter. You could even say she was an eager beaver, if that didn’t sound so offensive to less-industrious semiaquatic rodents. Her 200-plus brother and sister bunnies might have been more than content to stay down home on the farm. But Judy had bigger plans!
You see, animals have now evolved beyond all that useless “predator and prey” bloodlust of their past. Indeed, they’re all part of a very civilized and conversant society these days. So why shouldn’t a tiny bunny have the opportunity to be something like, say, a cop when she grows up? That’s right, a little puff of whiskers, feet and fluff called Judy Hopps has always had the lion-sized dream of joining the rhinos, buffaloes and moose on the police force.
So she signed up for the police academy. And while her limited scale, shall we say, made things a bit difficult, with a little extra hop-to-it-iveness the little rabbit bounded all the way to the top of her class. And right after graduation she was assigned the job of her dreams: She was to be the first bunny cop in the big city of Zootopia!
Of course, even that plum assignment had its share of frustrating toe stubs and tail tugs. Since she’s the first to benefit from Mayor Lionheart’s new mammal-inclusion initiative, well, the other cops on the force haven’t been all that welcoming. They look right over and past her.
Why, Captain Bogo barely growled in her direction long enough to assign her parking meter duty. He wouldn’t even consider her doing anything else. And Judy just knows she could be helpful in a big missing-animals case that everyone else is working on. But if it’s going to be parking meter duty, well, Judy will be the best parking meter cop you ever saw. They want 100 tickets handed out in a day? She’ll do 200! Before lunch! Then … maybe she can spend the afternoon, well, kinda lifting an ear in this direction or that.
She’ll keep a keen lookout for any slippery weasels or shifty foxes who might pass her way. Not that she’ll be species-profiling or anything. No sir. Judy has a way of sniffing things out, is all. And if there’s any back-alley beastie badness going on, she’ll find it. You’ll see.
On the surface it is a bright and delightful comedy about a cute, foot-thumping little bunny who won’t give up. She overcomes the biggest of bunny trail roadblocks to become exactly what she believes she was meant to be, while making lots of unlikely friends along the way. In other words, she stays true to herself and is kind to others. That’s as old-school a Disney theme as you’re gonna find.
But this good-vs.-evil tale set in a world of anthropomorphized animals is more that surface sweet. For the grown-ups it proffers a surprisingly hard-boiled (at least from a cartoon perspective) film noir detective story, featuring a cop and her CI (confidential informant for those of you who aren’t up on your gumshoe lingo) who endure each other and wade together through the mobbed-up underworld of shrews, polar bears and wolves, all in hopes of saving a city from a horrible and despicable wrong.
Because on top of all that, Mom and Dad will easily see that there is yet another layer here. This bouncy pic is designed to deliver a thump-the-pulpit sermon against any form of discrimination in our world. Zootopia’s particular brand of “species sensitivity” pushes onscreen critters—along with human moviegoers—to face up to their innate uncertainty (read: prejudices) about anyone not like them.
So far so good. But even when healthy tolerance peeks around the corner into the idea of accepting what people do (living as a nudist, for instance) and not just focusing on who or what they are (a particular body type or race), the movie seems to say that negative thinking still isn’t allowed.
Those are more carrots than you might expect to chew on while cabbing the kiddie crew home.
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