My review of the refreshing animated film Zootopia

Rating: 6/10 (10 April 2016)

In my opinion Zootopia is one of the best children animations since Rango as it attempts to tell a competent and interesting story instead of just projecting ideas and messages with only leaving stereotypical characters and thin story arcs left.
Zootopia focuses on its two main leads, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde and fleshes out their characters and why they are the way they are.Their relationship is well-realised except for one aspect that is a "spoiler" but it happens in so many movie's that you'll know it's coming. The twists aren't nearly as predictable then in other Disney films which is refreshing and the story overall is very investing and is able to have a message about racism without it feeling shoe-horned in. In terms of animation it is nice in it's simplicity like Judy's apartment and the way the action sequences are filmed are full of energy and are all throughout the film. Some wide- shots of the city are unexceptional but the rain forest and polar setting within the film looked excellent and water in CG animation is simply now perfected. The humour lands about 80% of the time with only some jokes being meh. The movie is clever in reflecting real-life and how the way something is in real-life can be covered in a sheen through publicity and an emphasis on that through advertisement. The film's messages are clever and well- thought out and while obviously there aren't in your face about it.
The film is not flawless though. There are about 5 lulls in the story that affect the pacing, dialogue sequences between the two main leads should have been a lot snappier (which ironically enough most of them took place straight after the Sloth sequence). Towards the latter half of the film plot conveniences show up and aspects are pretty dumbed down. And lastly, the song that was shoe-horned which is extremely mediocre but awful compared to most other Disney songs made for an awkward feeling in it's badness.
Overall Zootopia is a great animated children's film and a pretty good movie on it's own. It's flaws deter it quite a bit but with every scene either having humour, fantastically directed and animated action, great character development and sometimes even scares Zootopia's quite large amount of flaws are outweighed by it's consistency to entertain and just be an investing film. There are some modern animated films from the 2010s that technically are on the same level as this film but the attempt to do something different and it's succession is why I like it a little bit more but it's too heavy on slow moments and it is quite flawed so this is why I'm giving Zootopia my "GOOD" rating-6/10