Zootopia (2016)

Zootopia came around a lot faster than I imagined.  I’m going to be honest here and say that it didn’t appeal to me at all from the posters or the snippets that I saw.  My eyes were The Secret Life of Pets, which kind of reminds me a little of Toy Story but with household pets. However, Zootopia is a Disney animation and I love those to bits, even the few not so at par ones over the years. It was time for another theatre viewing! I rounded up my lovely girl friends and we were off for movie night! 🙂

Let’s check out Zootopia! 🙂

Zootopia (2016)

Director: Byron Howard, Rich Moore & Jared Bush

Voice Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Nate Torrence, Bonnie Hunt, Stu Lakes, Tommy Chong, J.K. Simmons, Alan Tudyk, Shakira

In a city of anthropomorphic animals, a fugitive con artist fox and a rookie bunny cop must work together to uncover a conspiracy.-IMDB

 Going into Zootopia, its obvious that I had no expectations.  Actually, I didn’t even really know what the story was about. The only thing I knew was animals living like humans. Does that appeal to me? Well, I’m not quite sure.  Will it work out? Who knows, right? I went into Zootopia with one hope in my mind: to have a good fun time.  Did it deliver? HELL YEAH! I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.  It was a funny yet heartfelt movie that I found could relate to both adults and some equally cute moments for kids.  Maybe not too young because some kids next to us started squirming around a little impatiently near the last quarter of the movie.

One of the best parts of Zootopia is its production design.  The city along with its districts are thoughtful and detailed.  The beauty of the animation moving one place to the next in Tundratown, Rainforest District, Zootopia metropolis, down to the little country areas where our main character Judy comes from, Bunny Burrow, reflects what they are trying to get across.  Cities can live together but they also keep to themselves in many ways.  There is still a part of the animal complex that will stick to what they biologically need even if the predator and prey complex is no longer there. And that reflects on our reality as well, in many cases.

Another really fantastic aspect of Zootopia was the voice acting and the character designs.  Most of the characters, especially our main characters, Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps are absolutely endearing.  Watching their friendship/partnership grow despite their differences and prejudices was a pure joy.  They had beautiful and touching and really funny moments. A lot of credit has to go to their talented voice cast.  Ginnifer Goodwin does the voice for Judy Hopps and I like her a lot.  Nick Wilde’s voice was done by Jason Bateman who is becoming an increasingly fave of mine. Not to mention, the Mayor is voiced by J.K. Simmons and one of my fave voices here is Bellwether voiced by Jenny Slate.

Its essential when discussing Zootopia to go right back to talk about the humor and the pacing and the message.  For one, Zootopia is funny.  Many jokes and puns might go over the head of the younger children but they still have some funny expressions that will keep them intrigued.  Plus, they use some pop culture references like The Godfather.  At the same time, there is a lot of action going on.  This is an investigation in the end about missing mammals in Zootopia.  There are chase scenes and danger in the horizon.  At the same time, it also delivers inspirational and motivational messages of accepting diversity, pushing away prejudices, discrimination and stereotypes and chasing your dreams even when everyone thinks its impossible.

I’m forgiving towards Disney movies and animations, especially because they are usually geared towards children.  Zootopia doesn’t need to be forgived though.  I’m not sure it will hold up that 99% Rotten Tomatoes score as a memorable Disney classic but it does a lot of things right.  The animation is beautiful, the production design is detailed and thoughtful, the voice acting is stellar and the characters are fun and intriguing.  Its downright entertaining with lots of funny moments and a meaningful message to go with it.  I loved it! It gave me exactly what I wanted and some more.

Have you seen Zootopia? What did you think of it?

Valentine’s Marathon: He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)

It seems that these multiple story movies are becoming a thing.  They usually don’t get a lot of praise except for Love Actually, which was possibly the first of its kind.  This one doesn’t seem to have a lot of good ratings on it either on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes but when it first came out, I had no expectations from it at first and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Now I’m going back to see it again for this marathon, lets see how that went…

Director: Ken Kwapis

Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Kevin Connolly, Scarlett Johansson, Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck, Justin Long, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, Drew Barrymore

Based on the self-help book by the author of Sex and the City, He’s Just Not That Into You looks at different types of relationships amongst a group of people that are linked together through friends, coworkers, acquaintances or simply coincidence and how a lot of people will misread and misunderstand the signals that other people send off.  We start with Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) who is on the search for a relationship.  She always wonders and waits to see if a guy will call her back after a first date or after a first meeting at the bar.  That is until she meets the friend of one of the dates that she decides to try and “accidentally” see.  Alex (Justin Long) is the manager of the City Supper Club and he is the exact opposite of Gigi because he can read the signals of others very well and because of this, he starts helping Gigi in her future pursuits.  At the same time, the guy who Gigi saw at the beginning of the movie, Conor (Kevin Connolly) who is obsessed with Anna (Scarlett Johansson) who had slept with him before but now only finds him in times of need for comfort and affection.  Anna is trying to build a career as a singer and at the supermarket one night, she meets Ben (Bradley Cooper) who is a married man and is in a business that can help her with her career.  They are attracted with each other and despite Ben trying to resist, he eventually has an affair with her while his wife Janine (Jennifer Connelly) is putting all her focus into their new house’s renovations.  At work, Janine’s coworker Beth (Jennifer Aniston) has been in a relationship with Neil (Ben Affleck) for 7 years and she wants to get married however, Neil does not want to.  A string of stories that looks into a guy’s signals and the rules and exceptions of whether a guy is into you or not.

“If a guy’s into you, he will make it happen no matter what”

Let me just say that I originally didn’t really think I would like this movie at all.  The first time I saw this and realized that it was based on the Sex and the City author.  I don’t really have too much love for those series. Never really caught on to it maybe or its just not my type of series. Either way, this flick was definitely good.  It definitely sticks to its boundaries of being a romantic comedy and especially with a relatively strong cast.  It was witty and fun.  They put in interviews of other people to make it a bit more original with certain issues they were dealing with for example, “if a man doesn’t want to marry you…” then it flips over to people talking about it and some of them are funny.

If you can brush off the whole trying to be a self-help and teaching us the signs of when things aren’t working out which from the things I’ve read are usually based on stereotypes because we all know that every relationship is different.  If you just solely focus on the stories and think about it in one basic way: Each girl is the exception to the rule when in the eyes of the guy that loves us for who we are.  Its as simple as that.  So take that and just go for the ride and you might enjoy this movie.  One warning though, even if you fellow men out there are okay with rom-coms, I really don’t recommend this one to any guys.  You might want to either fall asleep or yell at the stereotypes (unless you like any of the actresses for their good looks).  I mean, even I wanted to yell at the stereotypes, especially those that Gigi had where she just sits by the phone and waits for the guy to call.  Are all girls supposed to be portrayed as being that desperate?  That part really bothered me because I guess its an extreme to bring Gigi to portray the desperate need to find a guy and how she doesn’t know how to read the signals that the guy is sending out each time so she just hopes all the time. Its the concept of never losing hope that is the theme of her story, so I guess you can’t really blame her.

As much as all the side stories were cool, the main story is of Gigi’s search for romance and how she learns that its better to have tried to fall in love than to just block out the feeling of being able to love someone.  This is miles and miles away from as being as epic as Love Actually (which I reviewed HERE!), but it does have some witty and fun moments and as always in these flicks, some sweet and touching moments as well.  No tears will be shed but there is enough smiles and laughs to be had.  I state once more that guys should avoid this…it can’t be more targeted towards girls than teaching girls how to know when guys aren’t into them.  This may not be an epic movie but as generic as it may seem, it is really helped a lot by the chemistry that the talented cast brings.

Oh right, one more thing, if you do end up seeing this, you should definitely wait for the ending credits because they still have a few scenes there and those are actually pretty good and wraps up the movie in a pretty good way.

Have you seen this? Did you like it? Do you enjoy these multi-story setup for movies or are they confusing and hard to perfect?