Smart and inclusive animation with a social conscience

Rating: 7/10 (15 March 2016)

Yes, it's a Disney movie about talking animals. And yes, it's deservedly kicking butt at the global box office.
Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) is a rabbit from an idyllic rural community. Her risk-evasive parents just want her to be a farmer, but Hopps has bigger ideas. She's heading to Zootropolis to chase her dream of being a cop. While on traffic duty she meets Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a sly fox skilled in the ways of the hustle. When Hopps lucks into a missing person case, she teams up with Wilde to uncover the mystery. It's bigger than they thought. Turns out predators are regressing to their aggressive primal state, frothing and speechless; and there's a cover-up which goes right to the top. Fox and bunny must work together to solve the case.
The "Zootopia" of the (better) US title refers to Hopps' belief that the city is a place of infinite diversity and complete harmony. To quote the Hail, Caesar!: Would that it were so simple. Zootropolis is a place of tensions and prejudices between its animal citizens. One of those prejudices is carried by Hopps herself: she carries fox repellent spray wherever she goes. There's the first Big Theme of the movie: entrenched assumptions about the dangerous otherness of others.
The city itself is split into clear sections – desert, ice, jungle etc – like a Super Mario Bros map. It makes for a nonsensical but utterly beautiful environment. It's populated by all manner of creatures great and small. The movie directly addresses Disney's historic fascination with anthropomorphising beasts. There's even a slightly awkward visual acknowledgement of cartoon animals' lack of genitalia.
For a feature cartoon we get an unusually coherent plot, channelling some enjoyable buddy cop and detective thriller tropes. And the script delivers mercifully few ironic, immersion-breaking wisecracks.
Caricatures abound, of course, but Hopps and Wilde are nicely sketched characters whose backstories of being bullied mirror each other's. They also mirror the broader social issues the film addresses.
This is a timely film, what with Mr Trump sowing the seeds of fear and hatred and appealing to base rage as a release valve. Zootropolis's final manifesto is unapologetically liberal: one of finding common ground as a way of accommodating diversity. We are evolved, it says, so that we might seek an alternative to resolving difference through our most basic animal instincts. Existence precedes essence, not the other way around.
Hopps gets a Big Speech at the end where she spells out the themes and moral messages of the film, just in case they went over the heads of younger viewers – or possibly adults who genuinely believe what they've seen is 'just for kids'.
So, while a barrel of fun and full of jokes (many of them visual, rewarding repeated viewings), this is a surprisingly thoughtful and sober film. It has its fair share of slapstick, but isn't stuffed with interminable action sequences. We definitely don't get the Marvelisation that almost spoiled Big Hero 6 in the final act. The big and clever showdown here is resolved through the use of imagination; and imagination is the key to empathy; and empathy is the key to a tolerant society. Nice writing.
Inside Out was about human consciousness. Zootropolis is all about social conscience. Maybe it doesn't hit the heights of Pixar's masterpiece, but it wouldn't look out of place in the filmography of that lauded studio. Zootropolis may be a struggle for very young ones, but it is consistently entertaining and valuable viewing for smart nippers and adults alike.