solid humor, messy but audience-appropriate writing/plot, questionable themes

Rating: 8/10 (25 March 2016)

(crossposted from letterboxd)
so, zootopia! the most talked about and anticipated film in the small world i live in. (insert appropriate and thematic joke here.)
overall i think this movie is coherent enough for the kids. while the social premise IMO is iffy in the divide between predator/prey and the plot that followed, i do think - and like - that the strongest moral is just not to judge animals - or rather, people, in the real world - by your preconceived notion about them. the reason i'm kinda eh about it is because, aside from nick, it seems that the rest of the society in zootopia treats predators better than prey so then (spoiler) a prey ends up being the main antagonist because they want more respect than they receive. so the antagonist tries to make the predators worse out to be than they truly are, and in the end Judy, who is our hero and falls into the category of prey, tells us not to judge a book by its cover.
if we really want to get into this (which i am), someone can easily take the "not all ____!" as the theme of this movie - we're told and shown in most parts that predators and prey live together in harmony, and stay in their own lane. but the predators turn their noses up at Judy - who wants to be a cop - because she's small and nonthreatening. in nick's flashback, we see him being bullied by prey-animals because "why would you think we'd ever trust a fox?" we and they know that predators are above prey on the food chain, and the heart of the movie is to thin and extinguish that line (which reminds me - how and what do the carnivores even eat??) - but the system /is/ acknowledged and enforced with both our protagonist and antagonist. and in the end, there's still an audible "not all (people in a demographic of power)" - which we all know is an incorrect message in the first place.
but! social message aside, the /individual/ message of not treating people by your preconceived notions of them is good - and tbh this is more relevant for people who *are* privileged, because it's the cishet white men who are more prone to make transphobic, homophobic, racist, and misogynistic jokes. so without looking at the scope of things, this is a better and more relevant message.
other than that:
the writing - was cute, kind of harried with a lot going on, likely because of world-building and characterization. halfway through and towards the end it started getting incredibly predictable. i figured that the lamb was behind the whole thing as soon as it was mentioned that she was appointed the new mayor. i'd actually hoped it wouldn't turn out that way, or at least turn out more formulaic - but alas. in the plot it just didn't land for me, felt more like a twist for the sake of a (predictable) plot twist, rather than convincing writing. plus, it turned her whole characterization on its head and felt more cinematic than treating her like an actual character.
the reason i'm giving this four stars, though, is because of the humor. despite all my nitpickiness as we can see above, i was laughing basically through the whole film. all of the jokes were gold and landed solidly - shakira the gazelle was somehow hilarious to me, the references to the godfather (which i haven't even seen!) were great, the SLOTHS, and random witticisms and the visual humor really saved this movie for me. anyone who knows me knows that i like to have fun first, everything else is second - and in zootopia, the fun definitely delivered.
also, judy and nick's relationship was cute. cheesy, but convincing and easy to sympathize with. i suppose the romance was implied, since i doubt Disney would've green-lighted a cross-species furry relationship - and the "you know you love me" "well yeah, i know i do" at the end was EXTREMELY awkward and cringe-worthy for me. but they do have an adorable friendship (or otherwise) together, and as someone who was a kid once, this movie is definitely emotional and dynamic enough to be good and enjoyable.
edited to add: i do want to acknowledge that i know that the whole social theme of this movie is an anti-racist sentiment, but tbh i'm not a big fan of other forms of oppression as a ~metaphor~ for racism - if you want to write a narrative about racism, write a narrative about racism. this movie does not exist in a vacuum but the relationship between the predators/prey in this movie are very different from white people/POC (and other forms of oppression) with humans in the real world, hence my first few paragraphs about why i didn't like it.