Zootopia (2016)

Jack loved and I liked this animated story about racism, sexism, and stereotyping in which a female rabbit (prey) befriends a male fox (predator) and joins the police force which is made up mostly of male predators in a civilization that prides itself on prey and predators living together peacefully.

We don't see a lot of animated movies--our granddaughters are still too young for features--so each year we try to pick the animated feature Oscar winner to see and this year we did! Ginnifer Goodwin (after I wrote about her in A Single Man she did a lot more TV) voices the heroine Judy Hopps and Jason Bateman (last blogged for The Family Fang) is the sly fox Nick, heading up a cast of dozens, also including Idris Elba as the police chief, J.K. Simmons as the mayor, and Jenny Slate as the assistant mayor (most recently in these pages for The Jungle Book, La La Land, and Obvious Child, respectively). This is the first feature acting credit for Colombian pop star Shakira--voice of Gazelle--who, naturally, sings on the soundtrack as well.

So many above-the-line crew! Three directors: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, and Jared Bush, two screenwriters: Bush and Phil Johnston, and seven people credited with the story: Howard, Moore, Bush, Johnston, Jim Reardon, Josie Trinidad, and Jennifer Lee with an impressive array of credentials. Howard co-directed Tangled, Bush wrote Moana (2016) (also Oscar-nominated this year), Johnston was profiled for co-writing The Brothers Grimsby, Reardon was co-screenwriter of Wall-E, and Lee was co-director/solo screenwriter of Frozen. All of the above do voices in the movie except Reardon and Lee.

Prolific composer Michael Giacchino's (last scored Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) entire soundtrack can be streamed from this link, which begins with the Shakira track. My favorite so far is Walk and Stalk. Plus there are some songs, listed here, including a rap song which I can't find online, with vocals by Daveed Diggs, who was in the original cast of Hamilton.

We watched this on Netflix ten days ago and it's also available to rent on our cable station. If you see it, you might enjoy reading some of the many, many trivia items on imdb. Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are averaging 98 and 92% and it's sure to get a bump in receipts after its Oscar win.