Zootopia

Release Date: March 4, 2016

Watch Date: July 16 – July 18, 2023

“Walt Disney Animation Studios presents a heartwarming comedy-adventure set in the modern mammal metropolis of Zootopia. With habitat neighborhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, it’s a melting pot where animals from every environment live together-a place where no matter what you are, from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew, you can be anything. But when optimistic Officer Judy Hopps arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isn’t so easy. Determined to prover herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering with fast-talking, scam-artist fox Nick Wilde to solve a mystery.”

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    Ask me why my husband decided to pick up a ton more shifts right before our daughter’s second birthday so we barely get to spend any time together and therefore our movie watching has dipped tremendously?

    I could not give you an answer to that.

    Maybe it’s sort of a slump. We’ve got “Avenger’s August” coming up, which we’re both extremely excited for, and several other theme months, and so maybe it’s difficult to jump into the 60s with any level of gusto. Maybe it’s the family drama, not ours but extended, that we’ve had brewing for months finally coming to a head and us being drawn annoyingly into it because that’s what happens when you’re both the eldest children. I don’t know. But we’re not doing as much as we could be this July, and it’s actually making me quite sad. Our goal is ten movies a month, and this is the first time I’ve ever been worried we might not hit that.

    But we need a light and airy movie. We needed something that let us breathe, after the week we’ve had – the increased work schedule did not align very well with the family drama. But I think we’re out of the woods now, right in time for our ten days of movie picks, which might actually work to July’s favor. Now will I be primarily picking movies we should have watched anyways, sure, but I get to do what I want.

    On to the main topic at hand:

    Zootopia.

    You want a movie that addresses society’s serious issues in a family friendly way, that takes those things seriously, doesn’t sugar coat them, but doesn’t cover your screen with gore and politics? Zootopia. It only hit Bob last night that this movie is about racism and police overreach. Up until now, he’s been just enjoying the fanciful world full of cute animals whenever he’s watched it. That’s how subtle these messages are if you’re not paying attention. But that doesn’t mean you don’t absorb them. You’re going to walk away thinking a little bit about the differences between people, and if all types of animals can live in a society peacefully, why can’t humans. Why can’t we have a police force that does, genuinely, want to protect all members of society, and not just a select few? That isn’t a danger to people based purely on a stereotypical profile.

    But it’s also a very good movie full of cute animals and a fox and a bunny that maybe fall in love, and there’s references to different moments in pop culture, Frozen and Breaking Bad immediately come to mind, and there’s a nudist spa, and a mob boss and…it’s just a well balanced film that does what it set out to do, and does it so extremely well that you don’t even notice. I notice a new joke, a new reference, nearly every time I watch this film, and as I said before, the message it’s trying to promote still rings true – and hasn’t unfortunately become irrelevant with time. Even the twist, the first time you watch it, is unpredictable and well done. I remember not quite understanding how the film hadn’t wrapped up with the first red herring.

    Zootopia stuck in people’s hearts and Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde became immediate fan favorites. Now, for some people maybe they stuck too deeply in their hearts, but I’m not here to judge. Their relationship grows extremely naturally, and they’re both exceedingly likeable and well rounded characters with their own flaws, traumas, dreams and goals. The way their characters develop through the movie makes complete sense, and the fact that they are completely different from who they were at the beginning of the film rings true to life.

    If you thought this was just a cutesy animal movie that should be dismissed and somehow you’re enough of a Disney fan that you read our blog and you haven’t watched this film yet, then you need to. You need to make plans to do it pretty much as soon as you’re done reading this. Because it’s so, so much more than what you could ever anticipate it being and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

    Just don’t bring up the fact that in Canada it is technically called Zootropolis, even though no one refers to the city by that name in the entire film – despite the fact that there are other regional changes. Bob gets a little annoyed by that whole thing, and to be honest, so do I. Canadians would have understood Zootopia. That’s all I’m saying.