Zootropolis

Zootropolis (called “Zootopia” in the USA) is one of the best Disney offerings in a good long while – the message of tolerance and anti-racism is a wee bit ham-handed, but I thought it was great that they were also emphasising the importance of following your dreams, even when you have to work at them and even when other people doubt your ability to achieve them and try and put you off. Judy Hopps, the fluffy bunny policewoman, was a great protagonist. She fought to stay positive even when other people got her down, even when her own parents tried to dissuade her from her dream. I think it was also very powerful that they addressed microaggressions and subconscious prejudices through the protagonist, much more subtly than the rest of the message of tolerance.

Judy has a bad experience with a fox as a young bunny which reinforces the prejudice of her family against foxes, and they implore her to take a host of fox-repelling products with her to the big city to protect her in her new job. Judy thinks it’s nonsense, although she does carry one of the sprays for almost the whole film, unconsciously adhering to the stereotypes and racism she’s been brought up with. Her conscious behaviour averts this; she puts aside an initial reaction to Nick Wilde, a sarcastic red fox, and although she doesn’t like him very much after discovering he is a con artist, their friendship grows significantly through subsequent trials. In a press conference about halfway through, Judy unwittingly reveals she’s holding onto a lot of internalised prejudices when she speaks without thinking about how the predators are dangerous and might all go savage. Nick calls her out on it right after, pointing out she’s still carrying the fox spray, and when he pretends like he might eat her, she grabs straight for it, showing it affects her much more deeply than she had ever thought.

But she does apologise to Nick, then and more fully later on, for how her prejudices have affected him and led him to doubt their friendship, and he forgives her. I like the way the film nicely turns things on its head as well. A relatively simple missing persons case that Judy takes on to prove herself turns out to be anything but when it leads her (and Nick, dragged reluctantly along for the ride to get out of ‘felony tax evasion’) to the discovery that fourteen missing mammals in the city, all predators, have suffered from a mysterious affliction that made them turn ‘savage’, as feral as ordinary animals in our world without any of Zootopia’s evolved sensibilities.

The mayor rather foolishly has hidden the sufferers away while trying to find a cure in order to avoid upsetting the populace unduly, which Judy and Nick stumble on, leading to the mayor’s arrest and Judy’s disastrous press conference when she’s asked to explain what has affected the fourteen predators. Dispirited, Judy rejects the offer of her friend – formerly the glorified secretary ‘deputy mayor’, promoted to mayor – to become the face of the city’s police department and returns to her family’s carrot farm to give up on her dreams. But there she finds a clue that leads her to finding the predators were deliberately poisoned by somebody, and after reuniting with Nick, she learns that the new mayor was responsible.

‘This city is 90% prey,’ says the treacherous perpetrator, the sheep in wolf’s clothing, revealing she planned the whole thing to discredit predators and move power into the hands of all the more numerous prey species. ‘Aren’t you tired of being undervalued?’

There are some great touches in the film. I love the riff on The Godfather when Nick and Judy are hauled up in front of Mr Big, who turns out to be a minute arctic shrew with enormous polar bear bodyguards. They’re saved from being ‘iced’ by Mr Big’s daughter, who Judy saved earlier in the film from being crushed by a giant doughnut sign. The whole thing with the naturist club is very entertaining as well. Almost everything Nick says is gold. I would give the film a solid 9/10.