Zoo­trop­o­lis

Can ani­mals from dif­fer­ent species live side-by-side? Is it even pos­si­ble to live in a world with­out ani­mal dis­crim­i­na­tion? Disney’s lat­est CGI offer­ing, Zoo­trop­o­lis (released as Zootopia in the US), con­tains a sur­pris­ing polit­i­cal edge com­pared to recent world-beat­er, Frozen, which was all song, dance and sisterhood.

This film presents a remark­ably vivid ani­mal metrop­o­lis, where every mam­mal, big or small, is equal and able to blend seam­less­ly into big city life. But is every­thing real­ly as cosy as it seems? Can they avoid their inbuilt urges or any genet­ic pre­dis­po­si­tions by retreat­ing to their respec­tive tribes and get into a right old fur fight?

The sto­ry begins when the ridicu­lous­ly adorable Judy Hopps (voiced by Gin­nifer God­win) leaves her sim­ple life in Bun­ny Bur­row to fol­low her dream of becom­ing the first rab­bit police offi­cer from a fam­i­ly of car­rot farm­ers. She expos­es the ten­sions that under­lie life in the mam­mal mec­ca. From anoth­er angle, it could all be a metaphor espous­ing a mul­ti­cul­tur­al soci­ety – does this much polit­i­cal intrigue real­ly work with­in the frame­work of Dis­ney movie? Sur­pris­ing­ly, yes.

Any heav­i­ness is cut through with the cheese-tas­tic theme song, ​‘Try Every­thing’, by Shaki­ra (who voic­es super­star Gazelle), the sound­track to Judy’s jour­ney to the cap­i­tal, where every­thing appears shiny, per­fect and in sync. A parade of besuit­ed hip­pos, giraffes and ger­bils scur­ry to and from work – each has their place in this mod­ern, ani­mal-designed world – which, inci­den­tal­ly, is visu­al­ly astound­ing. Stray­ing away from soft­er, more child­ish visu­als, the ani­ma­tion here is impec­ca­ble. It bril­liant­ly show­cas­es the relat­able char­ac­ters with­in these sen­tient ani­mals. A sprin­kling of pop cul­tur­al ref­er­ences, such as Judy head­ing to the big city, liv­ing in a squalid apart­ment and wist­ful­ly Skype-ing with her par­ents, res­onates with a cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of grad­u­ates leav­ing the nest and tak­ing that next step towards find­ing a vocation.

Judy’s first bug chal­lenge upon enter­ing the police force is when buf­fa­lo Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) assigns her to park­ing duty. Not will­ing to suc­cumb to the stereo­type bestowed upon her low­ly rank, her com­mit­ment to jus­tice and desire to con­tribute to soci­ety helps her rise swift­ly through the ranks. A sur­pris­ing part­ner­ship devel­ops with con-fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bate­man), and soon Judy finds her­self amid the crim­i­nal under­world, test­ing her sense of benevolence.

Where Zoo­trop­o­lis was once famous for its blind­ness towards predator/​prey hos­til­i­ty, we see this bal­ance come under threat when a dark side is unleashed caus­ing the sav­age ani­mals to revert to their genet­ic car­niv­o­rous atti­tudes. Play­ing on metaphor­i­cal ideas of racial and social injus­tice, this urban jun­gle soon breaks into pan­de­mo­ni­um, with Judy and Nick rac­ing against time to bring equal­i­ty back to the city. At its deep­est it has echoes of inci­dents like the Rwan­dan geno­cide or Russ­ian anti-Jew­ish pogroms – exam­ples of placid peace­time ecosys­tems where peo­ple were incit­ed to exter­mi­nate their neigh­bours over triv­ial racial dif­fer­ences. At this point a sec­ond reminder: this a Dis­ney movie.

This is a clever film. It sat­is­fies pug-gif obsessed mil­len­ni­als with its cute char­ac­ters – the stand out being Bell­wether the sheep, (per­fect­ly played by the amaz­ing Jen­ny Slate, who has also lent her voice to this rap­tur­ous short Mar­cel the Shell with Shoes On.) More so, it smart­ly sheds light on soci­etal prej­u­dice, soft­en­ing it down for the young with com­ic ham­sters and otters, but pre­sent­ing the ingre­di­ents of racial inequal­i­ty, even going as far as unmask­ing the effects media can have on pub­lic opinions.

With its pow­er­ful female hero, brush­ing away the clas­sic roman­tic plot­line in favour of ful­ly com­mit­ting to its polit­i­cal agen­da – it could’t be bet­ter tim­ing for the release of Zoo­trop­o­lis. It’s a refresh­ing and qui­et­ly rad­i­cal film which deserves vocif­er­ous praise. It intro­duces very real con­cepts to future gen­er­a­tions, and they’re all wrapped in a spark­ly Dis­ney bow.