Review

Long ears of the law

Rabbit cop and streetwise fox are on the case in cuddly, but preachy, Zootopia

Rookie police bunny Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) teams up with fugitive con artist fox Nick Wilde (voice of Jason Bateman) to solve a mysterious case in Disney’s Zootopia.
Rookie police bunny Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) teams up with fugitive con artist fox Nick Wilde (voice of Jason Bateman) to solve a mysterious case in Disney’s Zootopia.

Zootopia is worth catching, if only for a single sequence. On an earth where human beings have never appeared, a determined, impatient police officer, who happens to be a bunny, has come to the DMV (Department of Mammal Vehicles) to run a trace on a license plate involved in the disappearance of an otter.

Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is in for a world of hurt because the department is entirely populated by sloths. Lacking Judy's leporine speed and cursed with claws that enable them to type only one key at a time, the sloths inadvertently hamper her investigation, driving her understandably apoplectic in the process.

Zootopia

86 Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake, Tommy Chong, J.K. Simmons, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, Shakira, Raymond S. Persi, Della Saba, Maurice LaMarche

Directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

Rating: PG, for some thematic elements, rude humor and action

Running Time: 108 minutes

While my last visit to a DMV was surprisingly quick and efficient, adults in the audience will howl at Judy's dilemma because they've been through it themselves. The sequence is so funny that it's oddly forgivable that the rest of Zootopia rarely matches up to that comic plateau.

Zootopia spends most of its time getting by on having cute characters and reminding viewers that first impressions and stereotypes can be dangerously misleading. If the movie's lesson gets redundant, it may be because we two-legged creatures have a troubling habit of learning more slowly than the sloths at the DMV shuffle their forms.

Judy's impatience is understandable. Having grown up on a carrot farm, she has been told never to want any other profession than farming. Nonetheless, her sharp senses, firm sense of right and wrong and steely resolve make her an ideal cop.

The city of Zootopia certainly needs her services. A series of animals, all predators, have disappeared, and her peers are unable to figure out why. The city has survived because predators have evolved to where they no longer have to eat the flesh of others to live. The animals who used to be prey are understandably wary of their former antagonists, but Judy believes the disappearances might be an omen of something darker.

Despite having been bullied by a fox as a bunny, Judy teams with a vulpine con artist named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman). Nick knows the big city better than she does, and because prejudices keep foxes from landing legitimate gigs, he's experienced enough to easily outwit fellow criminals.

Neither has much support from the ZPD. Chief Bogo (Idris Elba), a cranky water buffalo, doesn't think that small fry like Judy and Nick are a match for more physically imposing creatures. The seeming legion of filmmakers reminding us that jumping to conclusions is folly might want to vary their routine a little more. It's almost as if they believed their viewers were all like Chief Bogo.

Some of the best sequences are actually quietly clever. Pay close attention to the population sign outside Judy's childhood village. Stereotypes aside, rabbits do keep census takers busy.

As Judy herself would say, I probably should not have said that she and her fellow animated critters were "cute." Only bunnies are allowed to use that word among themselves.

MovieStyle on 03/04/2016

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