Otherwise great movie hurt by rushed ending

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2016)

LAST WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
In the 2016 film Zootopia, we meet Judy, an aspiring rabbit police officer who's down on her luck until she gets a big missing-otter case. Along the way, she finds an unlikely ally in a red fox named Nick. What they find isn't simply a missing otter, but rather a society torn apart by prejudice and discrimination.
Zootopia begins with a promising premise. Judy follows her childhood dreams and overcomes the stigma associated with being a "weak, defenseless" prey, (i.e. a rabbit) to become the first police officer rabbit in Zootopia. Once she enters the police force, she initially finds it difficult to be taken seriously by her larger peers because she's a rabbit. We later see this problem with Nick when he hustles out popsicles to make a living. A weasel is reduced to petty theft and sales of bootlegged movies. Disney cleverly fits this into the movie to show why these prejudices are wrong but unfortunately reinforced through various means such as the news, as shown in the Judy's speech after Judy and Nick find the missing otter caged with other predators in an institution. During her speech, Judy explains to reporters that the predators were behaving erratically because predators are biologically induced to be wild, carnivorous savages. The animal allegory could easily be tied to real life. Predators are akin to many marginalized groups, such as Blacks. However, just as how there are Black presidents and Black police officers, we see a lion as mayor and a leopard in the police force. Certain predators are respected more than others, which is very realistic. Impressively, Disney manages to handle this allegory without being offensive.
Near the end of the movie, it's revealed that a group of sheep led by the assistant mayor are using Nighthowl flowers to drive predators into fits of murderous rage. This activity plays right into their hands (err, hooves?) by making society suspicious of a false threat, namely predators, rather than the true threat, the very prey that the Zootopians trust. This tendency to focus on a "common enemy" is a smart criticism of human society, and it encourages a discussion about social stratification and how it causes discrimination. When the assistant mayor shoots Nick, it really seems that Nick has lost his mind and is about to rip Judy to shreds. It's a powerful scene that shows how little Zootopia's officials care for the citizens whom they ostensibly represent.
Sadly, where Zootopia stumbles a bit is how it handles the ending. It turns out that Judy had somehow replaced the Nighthowlers with blueberries (shown in a deleted scene maybe?). Nick was simply pretending to be a rabid, crazy fox. And Judy was in on it the whole time. Assistant mayor gets sent to jail. Predators and prey get along. No conflict or long-lasting effects. Everyone's happy. The end.
I understand that Disney movies tend to have happy endings; oftentimes, I'm rooting for a happy ending in their films because I want the protagonists to win. Same goes for this movie. It was great to see Judy reveal the true cause behind the predators' sudden tendency toward manic fits of rage because now there's concrete evidence that predators aren't inherently violent. It was nice to see Judy and Nick reconcile after Judy's distasteful evaluation of predators. However, the ending is completely unrealistic. It erases almost everything that happened in those amazing 60+ minutes. Instead of blueberries teleporting into the assistant mayor's gun, there should've been real Nighthowl drugs. That way, Nick would've had to resist their effects to avoid killing Judy, thereby showing that predators aren't savages. There should've been some sort of ongoing tension between the predator and the prey populations, too. I figured the predators would've been furious over being drugged, locked in dark cages, and framed as savages by the very government that promised to protect them. Similarly, I thought at least some prey would've ignored the overwhelming evidence in favor of predators, especially those who were attacked by predators or witnessed their friends and relatives being attacked by predators. I was expecting Disney to show that throwing the bad guys in jail doesn't simply remove social ills.
At the end of the day, Zootopia is a pretty good movie. What it needs is a much, MUCH better ending. 7/10