Frankly Speaking: Zootopia Review

Zootopia is an animated movie from Walt Disney Animation Studios that is much like 1970 Disney adaptation of Robin Hood. The animals walk, talk, and live like humans do, cell phones and everything.

The movie takes place in a world where humans never came to be and the animals evolved to be as we are now. All the animals live in peace, predators and prey working together. The story follows Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), a young rabbit with a dream of becoming the first rabbit police officer in the Zootopia Police Force. Once on the police force, Judy is assigned to the ZPD’s 1st Precinct, where she is treated like a joke and assigned to parking duty by Police Chief Bogo (Idris Elba), who is a cape buffalo. While on parking duty, Judy meets the red fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman). Judy very quickly finds out that Nick is a small time con artist that knows all of the loop wholes needed to not get arrested. Judy very quickly gets annoyed with parking duty and when a small time robbery happens, she abandons her post to give chase. After catching the burglar, Bogo tries to fire Judy. But Mrs. Otterson (Octavia Spencer), trying to get someone to find her missing husband, convinces Bogo to let Judy search for him. However, Bogo gives Judy only 48 hours to find Mr. Otterson. If she fails, she has to resign from the force. While looking at the only photo of where the missing otter was last seen, Judy notices a certain fox in the corner of the picture. She goes and confronts Nick, outwitting him (technically blackmail) and getting the fox’s assistance in solving the case. From here, the two find more than they had originally bargained for, finding out that some animals have started going “savage” again. They now have to find out why these animals are turning “savage”, and how to stop it from tearing them, and the city of Zootopia, apart.

One of the many great things about Zootopia was the plot of the movie itself. While it is a Disney movie and the plot has to be simple enough for younger minds to understand, the way that everything was presented and flowed was extremely enjoyable for viewers of all ages. Just when you thought something had been figured out, another thing came along to screw with it and keep you wondering and wanting to know what happened or how it happened. Once everything is revealed and all of the pieces are put into place, the end of the film is satisfying and complete.

Another amazing aspect of this movie was the animation. Disney is known for its fantastic animation, but Zootopia certainly takes the cake. Everything in the movie, down to the smallest details, was beautifully and masterfully animated. The most impressive thing about this was actually something that most people might not notice or care about: hair/ fur. Hair and fur is consistently one the most difficult and painstaking things to create mostly because hair isn’t just one solid block that has no movement. Every character in this movie was a mammal with fur, and each one with fantastically animated fur.

There really wasn’t anything wrong with the movie, characters, story, or anything else like that. However, one matter was never actually addressed, and that was where were all of the reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish, and basically every kind of animal that wasn’t a mammal. It was mentioned in the beginning of the movie that the city of Zootopia was a mammal metropolis, so there is a possibility that all the other types of animals exist, but there was no hint or allusion to them.

Overall, this movie was absolutely fantastic. Everything about Zootopia, from the story, the characters, animation, and all other things were the best I’ve seen in an animated movie so far. With only one matter not being addressed, I couldn’t find nearly anything wrong with or done badly in the movie. As I can’t go any higher in the ranking scale, Zootopia gets a full 4 out of 4 stars.