Zootopia

Movie Title-- Zootopia

Release Year-- 2016

Running Time-- 1 Hour and 48 Minutes

Director-- Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

Cast-- Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Shakira, Raymond S. Persi, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Phil Johnson, Tom Lister Jr.

A rabbit follows her dreams to become a police officer and finds herself in an unlikely partnership with a con-artist fox to uncover a conspiracy in the mammalian metropolis of Zootopia.

As a young bunny, Judy Hopps (Goodwin) dreams of being a police officer in the mammalian metropolis of Zootopia. Although she is told throughout her childhood that a police officer is not the kind of profession that a prey would go into, she achieves her dream and graduates with top honors from the police academy. As she leaves home, she is gifted fox repellent (similar to pepper spray) by her parents Stu (Lake) and Bonnie (Hunt) Hopps.

She is given the job of parking duty by Chief Bogo (Elba), because he doubts that she can do the job. On her first day on the job, she is hustled by two foxes, Nick Wilde (Bateman) and Finnick (Lister Jr.) by believing that Nick is the caring father to a toddler, cleverly disguised as an elephant in order to buy a large popsicle in to melt down and resell it. The following day she is again on parking duty when she abandons her duties to chase down Duke Weaselton (Tudyk), a thief that stole a duffle bag of plant bulbs.

Although she caught the thief, Chief Bogo calls her into his office to reprimand her when they are interrupted by Mrs. Otterton (Spencer), an otter that is concerned about her missing husband, one of the 14 predators that have gone missing in previous weeks. Judy promises to find her husband and Chief Bogo reluctantly agrees with the stipulation that if she has not figured it out in twenty four hours, she has to resign.

Judy determines that Nick Wilde was the last mammal to see Mr. Otterton she gets him to help her by blackmailing him by recording him confessing to tax evasion. They soon learn that Mr. Otterton has gone “Savage” but not before ranting and yelling about something he calls the “night howlers”. This helps them to track down the missing predators only to uncover a much bigger conspiracy.

So, I adore this film. I took my 4 year old daughter to see the film in the theater back when it was released and there was no turning back for us, we had to have it when it came out and DVD and we were cheering for it to win (which it did) at the 89^th Academy Awards. I do however, think that there are two ways to watch this film; one as an adult and one as a child. My little one liked this film, she laughed at the jokes, she loved the characters and as a child was happy to see everyone working together in a society where tons of different species all work together in harmony.

As an adult you see the deeper, darker truth behind Zootopia; there is prejudice, racism (speciesism?) and fear in everyone. Even the way they talk to each other, Judy tells Clawhouser that other bunnies can tell bunnies they are cute but other animals can't; Nick constantly works on the assumption that as a bunny Judy is a dumb, weak bunny and most of the predators work on the assumption that all prey are meek and can't do the same kinds of jobs that they can.

As Judy and Nick, Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman have great chemistry. I love their characters but I may be slightly bias because I am a fan of both of them. My all time favorite character in the film is Flash the slot that works at the DMV. First off, a DMV full of sloths (another stereotype fulfilled) is HILARIOUS and a sloth named Flash, that is priceless.

There are so many great references in this film. One of my favorites is Duke Weaselton, selling bootleg DVDs of Disney movies with the titles changed to reflect what they would be released as in Zootopia. Duke Weaselton is played by Alan Tudyk who also played the Duke of Weasleton in “Frozen”, which is another great Easter Egg in this film, although it is one of the more obvious ones.

I say grab your favorite little people and settle down in front of the TV for this one and Don't Forget the Popcorn!