Wick's Review

Summary - Really Great 4.5

Zootopia is Pixar quality, meaning kids are optional, though there are no better movies to take kids to see. I chose a late show because late shows have the fewest kids, fewest but not none. Nowadays there’s always some parental units crazy enough to take their kids to a 10:40PM show. Those kids are gonna have issues.

The Pixar pedigree of this Disney Animation blockbuster is no surprise since it’s got John Lasseter as an Executive Producer, Pixar having taken over Disney Animation in a reverse acquisition some years ago.

Zootopia plays on utopia of course, the ideal of a perfect society where no one is unemployed and everyone plays by the rules. Here all God’s creatures live together in harmony. Lions laying lambs, that sort of thing. Only there’s no sex, this being PG and all, let alone inter-species sex, though the idea fires the imagination.

2 Stellar Starlets

• Ginnifer Goodwin voices Officer Judy Hopps, a rabbit from Bunnyburrow who is a newly appointed member of the Zootopia PD and the first-ever rabbit cop. GG has elevated her star to the stratosphere with this winning performance. I’m talking Scarlett Johansson voicing Her territory.
• Shakira sings pure pop for now people, er, animals as huge popstar Gazelle. Try Everything indeed.

2 Classic Scenes

• DMV Run By Sloths: Comic genius played to perfection, this scene slayed my theater two months ago when it played in a trailer. Comedy is rarely as good the second time and this one’s not, but it’s not far from it either. The slow-reveal joke scene within the scene is priceless time after time.
• Animal Nudist Colony: Hosted by Tommy Chong at his mellow-yellow best, this scene gets funnier as it rolls. Hippos spread-eagled lead to bottomless giraffes, one cleverly conceived anthropomorphic embarrassment after another. Bravo!

2 Stellar Starlets + 2 Classic Scenes + tweaking PC orthodoxy add up to a truly great movie.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Ginnifer Goodwin is a revelation as Officer Judy Hopps, voicing her as chipper and cheerful at all times. It’s a hoppingly engaging performance. GG’s come a long way from being Wife #3 on Big Love.

Bonnie Hunt & Don Lake play her parents, carrot farmers from Bunnyburrow who have long since given up having dreams. These are deftly ideal performances.

Selected Supporters from the World’s Largest Cast:

• Shakira as popster Gazelle sings the big pop anthem Try Anything and speaks sultry to the masses.
• Jason Bateman holds up his end of the bargain as a sly fox named Nick Wilde.
• Idris Elba thunders as Chief Bogo
• Nate Torrence cloys effectively as Clawhauser, the front desk cop.
• Tommy Chong plays a very accommodating host who prefers not to wear clothes.
• J.K. Simmons orates as Mayor Lionheart

Film - Really Great 4.5

Zootopia cleverly takes diversity to the extreme, with PC run amok. In doing so, it demonstrates an appealing favoritism for individual exceptionalism versus identity-group strictures. This right-of-center POV qualifies as subversiveness in the left-wing precinct that is Hollywood.

Phil Johnston stands out amongst a large creative team that includes half-a-dozen proven players.He cowrote the screenplay after helping conceive the story. Johnston wrote the brilliant & LOL Cedar Rapids.

Edge - Risqué 1.6

Lightly Risqué

Reality - Fantasy 4.7

This masterful Disney Animation film brilliantly employees multiple parallel universes sharing the same physical space. Now that’s a great use of animated reality!

Each weight-class of animal has it’s own urban environment, effectively scale models of each other. Magnifico!

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