#6: Zootopia

I have always been a humongous lover of anthropomorphic animal tales. I talked about Redwall, but there's also Mistmantle, and Geronimo Stilton, and Hermux Tantamoq and I totally understand that I just said a bunch of gibberish and you don't know what any of it is but it meant the world to me as a child.

Just 7 short years after making their first black princess a frog for most of her movie, the geniuses at Disney Animation Studios made a bare-bones, kind of muddled story about discrimination. Is Judy discriminated against because she's a rabbit? A herbivore? Small?

It's about Prey vs. Predators, and you can fill in the power imbalances yourself with whatever you like! Mayor Bellwether (My favorite character) talks about a "Mammal Inclusion Initiative" but mammals can be predators or prey.

Yeah, this movie doesn't have the bite of actually making a clear allegory, but the people who made it are mostly white men, and while their lives have had individual challenges, they don't immediately understand that everyone outside of that demographic has had far bigger challenges because of race and gender.




Go for what you learn about, I guess, the light-handedness fits because it's a family movie and I think any deeper would challenge them too deeply to make a entertaining movie, which I don't intend as an insult.

Too much technicality and you lose 'em, after all, how many of you have I lost in this review already?

So, uh...I do like the puns! Zuber! Selena Goatmez. It's all so bright and beautiful still. I adore how it looks and feels really lived in and well thought out.

The mystery is genuinely good...but the villain...let's just say, I'm very glad Ralph Breaks the Internet stopped with that.

I'm still a little annoyed that this won over "Moana" across the board - The Academy will nominate and reward an allegory over a movie actually starring brown people.

But see my paragraph above about the creators. Most of America will talk the talk and that's all.

With sequels - Because you know they're coming - I'm very interested in seeing the mysteries they come up with. After all, the supplementary material has an ALIEN HUNTER CONSPIRACY THEORIST PORCUPINE.

That's awesome.