“Zootopia” – A family movie that has so much more to offer

The an­im­ated movie Zooto­pia, also known as Zootro­polis in some European coun­tries, has it all. The 3D com­puter an­im­ated film was pro­duced by Walt Dis­ney An­im­a­tion Stu­dios and re­leased in 2016. If we look at the gross of $1.023 bil­lion world­wide, rank­ing among the top ten highest-gross­ing Walt Dis­ney films and budget of $150 mil­lion, it be­comes plain and simple that this is a must-see. But what makes it so spe­cial and high-ranked com­pared to a mul­ti­tude of other an­im­ated movies? The an­swer to this ques­tion first lies within the co-dir­ect­ors Byron Howard (Bolt and Tangled) and Rich Moor (Wreck-It Ralph) and the voices of Gin­nifer Good­win for Of­ficer Judy Hopps and Jason Bate­man for Nick Wilde, not to men­tion the voice of Shakira with an ori­ginal song writ­ten es­pe­cially for this movie by Sia and Star­gate called ”Try Everything. So ba­sic­ally, all the ele­ments that make it an ex­cep­tional movie are there for the pub­lic to en­joy and discover.

Prob­ably one reason why this an­im­ated movie was so well re­ceived by the crit­ics and the gen­eral pub­lic is that it has a little for every­one: chil­dren just love the dreamy and ideal­istic little rab­bit on the force, Judy Hopps, in com­bin­a­tion with the slick and cun­ning fox, Nick Wilde and the hu­mor­ous situ­ations that arise with their team­ing up. It’s im­possible not to love a bunny char­ac­ter, small in size with big bright eyes filled with hope and dreams when start­ing a new life in the big city of Zootro­polis and near the end of the movie you kind of fall for the fox too, root­ing for it and wish­ing for a happy end­ing. So you see, this an­im­ated movie is quite ap­pre­ci­ated by kids ex­actly due to the an­thro­po­morphic char­ac­ters, Judy rep­res­ents an in­spir­a­tion for kids who stand out through their dreams, she en­cour­ages per­sever­ance and cour­age to work hard for a wish to come true, doubled with the struggle of be­ing the new char­ac­ter on the block, so to speak. But most of all, what makes it en­joy­able for them is the graphic, the mu­sic, the char­ac­ters’ choice of cloth­ing, but no shoes though. There is also some­thing for the grown-ups, the en­tire movie is sprinkled with subtle ref­er­ences to man­kind’s faults and in­geni­ous comebacks that make it im­possible to re­frain from laugh­ing, re­gard­less how well aimed and pain­fully truth­ful they may be. The plot re­volves around the re­vert­ing back to an animal’s nat­ural state, to the status-quo of prey and pred­ator, sided of course by team­work, em­pathy and in­clu­sion. Lines like “It’s OK to have dreams, just as long as you don’t be­lieve in them too much” or what Judy’s mother says “We are good at mul­ti­plic­a­tion” will def­in­itely trig­ger laughter among adults, but are most of­ten easy to miss by the younger pub­lic. One of the most en­joy­able as­pects to dis­cover is the dis­crep­ancy between the spe­cies, how the en­tire Zooto­pia is layered in sev­eral so­cial strata re­gard­less of the fact that they pre­tend to fight for equal­ity. Is it an al­legory for the mod­ern society’s problems?

Sur­pris­ingly, the fi­nal movie is far from the ori­ginal idea, “When first pitched, the film centered a rab­bit Named Jack Sav­age, who left the city of Zooto­pia to ex­plore the South Seas. The film was un­der the titles Sav­age City and Sav­age Seas. The film­makers were un­im­pressed with the story, but were nev­er­the­less in­ter­ested in the concept of an all-an­imal city, al­low­ing a pro­ject cen­ter­ing the idea to go un­der­way.” (“Zooto­pia,” The Dis­ney Wiki,). In or­der to per­fectly mimic the an­imal in its real hab­itat, massive re­search has gone into their be­ha­viour and nat­ural en­vir­on­ment. There­fore, we have the bunny as a main char­ac­ter, in­no­cent and re­source­ful; the fox as a trick­ster for a sidekick; the sloth for an of­fice job that re­quires a lot of pa­per­work and the lion for mayor of Zooto­pia, so as we can see, a lot of work went into cre­at­ing the char­ac­ters with their faults and strong suits only to teach chil­dren the value of ac­cept­ance and in­clu­sion and re­mind adults not to judge a book by its cover. This is prob­ably what makes it a fam­ily movie to en­joy over the week­end, there is some­thing for all age groups sug­ar­coated with fluffy an­im­als, ori­ginal plot and smart comebacks. The reason I loved it so much and re­com­mend to who­ever wants a good laughter is that the world cre­ated is a well roun­ded one, the char­ac­ters fit just per­fectly and the ac­tion it­self, be­sides be­ing hil­ari­ous, of­fers les­sons to be learned. Valu­able les­sons re­gard­ing so­cial differences.

Reference List:

1. “Zooto­pia.” The Dis­ney Wiki, Fan­dom, https://​dis​ney​.fan​dom​.com/​w​i​k​i​/​Z​o​o​t​o​p​i​a​#​c​i​t​e​_​n​ote-26, Ac­cessed 04.12.2019

Dania Ber­inde