Funny and smart

Rating: 6/10 (20 April 2016)

"Zootopia" is an American animation movie from 2016 made by Disney. It runs for slightly under 110 minutes and was written and directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush. The voice acting cast includes a couple known names, but no really big superstars. I will not go into detail there as I watched the German dub (surprised to see Lau with such a minor character), but it's nice to see Simmons and Elba associated with this project. Check out the cast list for further voice actors. The story is fairly simple as it is about a young rabbit girl who tries to be successful with the police force. But there is a lot more depth to it of course: the fact that there has never been a rabbit in there, the crime story or the main character's relationship with the fox or foxes in general.
The only reason why I do not rate this film higher is that it somehow came short on the emotional side, at least for me. The standard is really high right now for animated films because there are so many good and great ones from recent years. But "Zootopia" or "Zoomania" as it is called here is still a success. Just not a triumph. It is a funny watch from start to finish thanks to a really interesting story and also very entertaining supporting characters. There are so many of them, but I guess my favorite is the Godfather opossum. This spoof was pretty hilarious. This scene is also one of these that makes it interesting to grown-up audiences. Another one would be the Breaking Bad parody near the end. The times when animated films were only for children are long gone. If they ever even existed, that is.
I had a really good time watching this film. It is fairly long for an animated film, but yet it never drags and this is a success too. The main character is certainly very interesting and they almost could have made a film just about her time at the police academy. And that one would have been good too. Beyond that, the cuteness helps a lot too, even if I should not say that as a non-rabbit creature as I learned from the film. The animation is very very good, but that is almost self-explanatory these days. The story with animal characters living like humans creates some nice truth if we see it from the perspective that they act like us so many times. Also provides great entertainment. And something which is not too usual is that it takes almost until the very end for us to find out the real criminal mastermind here. I liked it and I did not see the plot twist coming. It works well though and makes a lot of sense in the face of enemies not always being the ones who we think they are. The film offers bulls, possums, lions, foxes and more as antagonists until we find out the real truth. (At some point, I actually believe the concept of fear would be the main antagonist, but that may have been too philosophical.) But it also shows how flawed they are, which is very realistic from the perspective that we see them as the equivalent to humans. Especially that reference about the lion mayor trying to hide things that get his career into danger was very witty. Finally, as a German viewer I found it funny that the police boss was a bull as we call them like that here in Germany. It would be for American audiences as if he had been a pig, but I guess they did not want to go there in order to avoid criticism from the police force. Oh yeah, the Shakira song was pretty catchy too. This is the best animated film from 2016 I have seen so far and I would watch a sequel. Lets see how long it can stay on top, possibly until the very end? I recommend "Zootopia". Go check it out. The sloth alone is worth seeing it.