Byron Howard e Rich Moore
Zootropolis

THE REVIEW

I conclude this cycle of reviews dedicated to animated films (possibly those not yet reviewed here) with "Zootopia", perhaps one of the last flourishes of the Disney/Pixar house (released shortly after the equally excellent "Inside Out"). The work, indeed ambitious, is the result of the efforts of 14 (!) screenwriters and an unspecified number of contributors, exegetes of a technically impeccable cinema which blends (a rather rare thing in modern animation) the most traditional buddy movie, with echoes of Hawks ("The Big Sleep", 1946), the gritty atmospheres of Raymond Chandler, or the classic detective stories of partners reminiscent of "Lethal Weapon", naturally seasoned with all the Pixar arsenal: sparkling colors; anthropomorphic animals; supporting characters that are never banal or forgettable; a somewhat familiar but seemingly valid moral (metropolises are places to share experiences and life’s hardships without distinction of sex and/or race). There is something extra that cannot help but be a link to reality (the film came out in 2016, right in the midst of the Hilary Clinton-Trump electoral race): the unsuspected mayor who foments fear of the other and believes that governing means spreading terror and hatred.

So, it's a whodunit, complete with mysterious kidnapping, murderer, culprits and investigations to carry out. She (Judy Hopps) is a bunny police officer in a world where rabbits (being too small) shouldn’t be able to do that job; he (Nick Wilde) is a super sly fox, thief and con artist caught up in a shady trade of popsicles and contraband. Swirling around them is a megacity with four different macroclimates, where we meet the likes of Chief Bogo (a huge bull at the head of the city’s police); Yax, a hippy yak running something like a nudist garden for animals; Mr. Big, a tiny yet powerful shrew-mobster at the head of a mafia family (an unabashed parody of Don Vito Corleone from The Godfather, with matching wedding and lexical references); and, above all, the sloths, hired at the DMV in spite of their renowned sluggishness (but the ending—no spoiler—reveals a surprise). The sequence where one of them, named Flash, must hand a document to Judy is one of the funniest and most hilarious scenes of all animated cinema (quickly becoming a small cult). Giraffe Gazelle (voiced by Shakira) is the promoter who preaches love and inclusion from every city-state screen, and perhaps is the least useful character, too didactic in outlining a plot that’s evidently too complex for an under 8 audience.

In fact, Zootopia dares where Pixar or Disney had not yet dared: Mr. Big, despite being a mobster, is accepted nonchalantly by the whole community since he helps the protagonists solve the case; and the sequence at the nudist camp is not exactly child-friendly, including all the Sixties innuendos in the (somewhat unorthodox) language of the yak. Maybe, as is often the case with the best Pixar films, the adult audience will have the most fun, though some scenes stand out, with rare force, in anyone’s memory (see Judy’s arrival in the city). Politically engaged, ethically correct, at times politically incorrect, it is the quintessence of modern animated entertainment cinema, where content is not divorced from technique and the plot twists follow one another at breakneck speed. Moreover, the mysterious substance causing animals to transform from docile lambs into fierce beasts (why? what happens?) hints at drugs and the like, as if mafia and nudist camps weren’t enough for the politically uncorrect.

Directed with a steady hand by Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush (B. Howard, moreover, already director of the highly successful Tangled), it grossed $1,025,521,689 worldwide, becoming the 15th highest-grossing animated film of all time. It has produced a very recent sequel (Zootopia 2) and an animated series. And it is one of the very few Disney/Pixar films in which not even a fleeting human figure appears, but anthropomorphization solves the problem by outlining rabbits, bulls, sheep, foxes, and sloths with all the vices and virtues of us humans (including corruption).

At times a bit sprawling, certainly far too elaborate, at times shameless, often brilliant.