Zootopia – Film Review

From the largest elephant to the smallest shrew, the city of Zootopia is a mammal metropolis where various animals live and thrive. When Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes the first rabbit to join the police force, she quickly learns how tough it is to enforce the law. Determined to prove herself, Judy jumps at the opportunity to solve a mysterious case. Unfortunately, that means working with Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a wily fox who makes her job even harder.

In a world where the movie landscape is dominated by sequels and remakes, it’s a genuine breath of fresh air to watch a brand new Disney animated film whenever they are released. Of course, some are better than others, but moviegoers can almost always expect to be treated to a beautifully animated film with memorable characters, great humor, and some seriously surprising emotional content in there as well.

This is exactly what Zootopia is. It’s not the most game-changing Disney film out there, but it definitely doesn’t do a lot of wrongs either. This is a gleefully uplifting film that is certainly going to inspire a lot of kids that watch it to want to continue to follow their dreams even when things are not looking too bright at the moment. Zootopia presents us with an incredibly charismatic and likable protagonist in the form of Judy Hopps, a rabbit who has dreamed of becoming a police officer ever since she was a bunny.

In the first ten minutes of the film, we see her finally get this dream job, much to her delight and excitement, but her dreams are quickly dashed when she learns that she’s just going to be a parking ticket cop. She wants to do “real cop things” like bust criminals and chase down vigilantes but her captain isn’t allowing her to do that. But when a case that’s too juicy to pass up gets brought to Judy’s attention, she must do everything she can to prove herself.

Judy finds herself in heaps of awkward situations and moments where things look as though they can’t get any worse. But even when the world around her is looking glum and it seems as if her career is going to rapidly deteriorate, she nevertheless persists and does everything she can to get the job done and get it done right. A lot of children are going to watch Zootopia and feel inspired by Judy’s storyline. It’s just nice to see an animated film that teaches valuable lessons to kids while also not being super preachy about it.

Zootopia is also a gorgeously animated movie, complete with painstakingly good detail. To think about just how long it must have taken the folks over at Disney to animate even just a single frame of this movie is staggering, and yet here they are with a nearly two-hour movie brimming with life and love. It’s amazing.

As mentioned earlier in this review, Zootopia doesn’t do anything truly game-changing and that’s because it follows the tried-and-true formula that’s been established many times in the past with previous Disney animated outings, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, it would have been nice to see a film that totally broke out of Disney’s comfort zone, but even still, Zootopia remains a heartfelt, hilarious, and stunningly animated film with valuable messages to learn from.