A Disneyfied, thrilling neo-noir

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2016)

Walt Disney studios has been anthropomorphizing animals since before any of us were born, and it goes to show that they picked up a couple of tricks along the way. What an amazing world they have created for this movie, with tons of great details both in the forefront and in the background. Some jokes were obvious, while some I'm sure go over the head of the mostly young audience that will see this movie. The different parts of the city, how the animals live together despite physical differences, all of it is a delight to watch. And it's rendered beautifully.
There are some parts of this movie that I'm not that big a fan of. The visual style of this movie is nice, but it's also very similar to what we have seen before. In Frozen, Tangled and this, we see Disney turning the style used in their traditional animation movies being converted into these computer generated styles. Maybe it is because other studios has also taken inspiration from Disney's old movies, but the animals in this movie mostly look very similar to what we have seen before in Dreamworks movies, for instance. While it was all still beautiful, the characters all felt like (really nice) "stock CGI-models".
The ending was a bit of a let down too. It's as "noir" as the rest of the movie, but underwhelming. Most likely because they did not want to go "darker", as this is a Disney-movie. Obviously we can't expect it to go as far as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", but a bit more would have helped.
All in all, it's a really fun movie that everyone can enjoy. I saw this in a "surpise screening" at the local art cinema (with a room full of cinephiles), and everyone seemed to enjoy it a lot. Despite there not being a single child in attendance. People were laughing and crying, jumping in their seats and going "aww". Disney knows their stuff.