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ZOOTOPIA
The Oscar Winner for Outstanding Animated Feature of 2016, Zootopia is a colorful and endlessly imaginative valentine to television and film police dramas that takes familiar movie themes from other genres but establishes its own credentials as an independent work by making all the characters animals working out of their natural place in the animal kingdom.
This is the story of Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a passionate young rabbit who wants to step out of the shadow of her farmer parents (voiced by Don Lake and Bonnie Hunt) and decides to leave the quiet little hamlet of her birth called Bunny Burrow and attend the police academy in the giant metropolis of Zootopia. Upon graduation, Judy excitedly reports for police duty but is dejected when she is assigned meter maid duties. She still decides to to be the best meter maid on the planet, but is eventually given the chance to solve a missing persons case with the aid of a slick hustling fox named Nick (Jason Bateman) but the case turns out to be so much more.
Screenwriters Byron Howard and Rich Moore (Moore also provides the voice of Doug) have constructed the accustomed overly complex screenplay that we have come to expect from Disney. This screenplay is inspired by several television and movie dramas of the past but it is inspiration only as the characters here are all animals and the writers never forget that. As in a lot of Disney stories, this story does present animals who should be natural enemies, like the rabbit and the fox, and has them learning how to peacefully co-exist, but this story adds an additional layer to this through line for the characters by also exploring the difference between animals who are predators and ones who are prey, something never addressed in such a direct manner before to my knowledge, making for an intriguing underlying theme for the story. Have to give a special shout out to the scene in the DMV...just brilliant.
I also love the care and originality put into establishing the central character of Judy Hopps...we first observe Judy in school participating in a school play where the major theme is that anyone can be anything they want to be. It's so obvious as we watch Judy's excitement in what she's doing on this stage, that this school play was her creation, she's not just an actor cast in a part, made all the more believable by the audience's half-hearted reception to the performance, a funny bit I didn't see coming. I also loved the viable chemistry that is generated between Judy and Nick...I'm always blown away when I feel actually chemistry between animated characters but it happens here big time.
The look of this film is absolutely dazzling with some dizzying camerawork, if you can call it that. There are moments during Judy's train trip to Zootopia where I actually got a little dizzy and the city itself was breathtaking. Goodwin and Bateman are superb as our star-crossed animals and mention should also be made of Idris Elba as the police chief, JK Simmons as the Mayor, Nate Torrence as Clawhauser, and Jenny Slate as the Mayor's assistant. Despite an extra ending or two, this film was a joy that completely enveloped me. I don't admit it very often, but this is one Oscar the Academy got right.
The Oscar Winner for Outstanding Animated Feature of 2016, Zootopia is a colorful and endlessly imaginative valentine to television and film police dramas that takes familiar movie themes from other genres but establishes its own credentials as an independent work by making all the characters animals working out of their natural place in the animal kingdom.
This is the story of Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a passionate young rabbit who wants to step out of the shadow of her farmer parents (voiced by Don Lake and Bonnie Hunt) and decides to leave the quiet little hamlet of her birth called Bunny Burrow and attend the police academy in the giant metropolis of Zootopia. Upon graduation, Judy excitedly reports for police duty but is dejected when she is assigned meter maid duties. She still decides to to be the best meter maid on the planet, but is eventually given the chance to solve a missing persons case with the aid of a slick hustling fox named Nick (Jason Bateman) but the case turns out to be so much more.
Screenwriters Byron Howard and Rich Moore (Moore also provides the voice of Doug) have constructed the accustomed overly complex screenplay that we have come to expect from Disney. This screenplay is inspired by several television and movie dramas of the past but it is inspiration only as the characters here are all animals and the writers never forget that. As in a lot of Disney stories, this story does present animals who should be natural enemies, like the rabbit and the fox, and has them learning how to peacefully co-exist, but this story adds an additional layer to this through line for the characters by also exploring the difference between animals who are predators and ones who are prey, something never addressed in such a direct manner before to my knowledge, making for an intriguing underlying theme for the story. Have to give a special shout out to the scene in the DMV...just brilliant.
I also love the care and originality put into establishing the central character of Judy Hopps...we first observe Judy in school participating in a school play where the major theme is that anyone can be anything they want to be. It's so obvious as we watch Judy's excitement in what she's doing on this stage, that this school play was her creation, she's not just an actor cast in a part, made all the more believable by the audience's half-hearted reception to the performance, a funny bit I didn't see coming. I also loved the viable chemistry that is generated between Judy and Nick...I'm always blown away when I feel actually chemistry between animated characters but it happens here big time.
The look of this film is absolutely dazzling with some dizzying camerawork, if you can call it that. There are moments during Judy's train trip to Zootopia where I actually got a little dizzy and the city itself was breathtaking. Goodwin and Bateman are superb as our star-crossed animals and mention should also be made of Idris Elba as the police chief, JK Simmons as the Mayor, Nate Torrence as Clawhauser, and Jenny Slate as the Mayor's assistant. Despite an extra ending or two, this film was a joy that completely enveloped me. I don't admit it very often, but this is one Oscar the Academy got right.