Zootropolis Review - Beautiful Animation, Important Message

Since Disney's animation renaissance, that started back in 2010 with Tangled, everything they've been putting out has been consistently very good, from the Oscar winning Big Hero 6 to the box office smashing Frozen. None of them, however, have been as good as Zootropolis.

Obviously, Zootropolis delivers on the essentials. The animation is as beautiful as you'd expect from a studio like Disney in 2016 and the character and location design is some of the best I've ever seen. I thought that the city of San Fransokyo in Big Hero 6 was stunning, but Zootroplis is on another level. There's huge attention to detail throughout, with design choices as small as trains having different sized doors for different sized animals, or big as the city being split into multiple different environments. The level of creativity on display here is on par with some of Pixar's greatest work.

Everything else is just as high quality as the animation. The script is incredibly fast and witty, supplying a lot of consistent laughs, from slapstick jokes for younger audiences and more clever gags for the older ones. The story is easy to follow, but it twists and turns enough to consistently hold your attention, considering its unusually long (for a kids movie) 108 minute running time. The characters are just as compelling as the plot, and while the film never quite meets the emotional heights of something like Inside Out, the challenges and struggles the main characters face are very modern and relatable.

‘Modern’ is a very good word to describe Zootropolis, because its message is a surprisingly contemporary one. It may seem, on the surface, just like another bright and colourful kids film, but it's actually a lot more clever than that. The main topic of the film is discrimination, something that's very relevant at the moment and it's handled very well. Instead of taking sides in real life situations (which would inevitably lead to a lot of problems), the film uses animals that don't represent any specific group, allowing the film to avoid unnecessary controversy, whilst not sacrificing the effect or the importance of the message. Kind of like Animal Farm, especially the 1954 adaptation, which was also (for some reason) a kids film.

To me, it’s the message that puts Zootropolis above any of the other recent Disney animations. It shows a level of maturity and an awareness of the real world that no other animated film has ever shown, whilst still staying colourful, enjoyable and funny. As I said before, you may not cry as much as you would in some of Pixar's best, but you'll come out of the cinema with a lot more to talk about than you'd expect.

8.4/10