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“We may be evolved, but down deep we’re still animals.” Disney’s Zootopia

6 March 2016

14 Comments

Zootopia

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

This political season is arguably the most distressingly fascinating one I can ever recall. Whether #ImWithHer or #FeelingTheBern or #MakingAmericaGreatAgain or #DumpingTrump, the vitriol and shenanigans, the dramatic tension and circus-world comedy, and the reality-television-fueled debasement of what it even means to be “presidential” are as titillating and train-wreck exhilarating as they are shocking and horrifyingly confounding.

Into this topsy-turvy world, where GOP elephants compare “hand”-sizes and Dem donkeys trade an endless stream of cocktail napkin memes, comes a funny little kids’ movie from Disney, an animated fable with mobster rodents and badge-wearing rabbits, hustling foxes and pencil-pushing sheep (who may or may not be political wolves). Disney’s latest effort Zootopia may very well be the allegory for our times, a medicinally incisive piece of camp that pierces the heart of our political juvenilia, not as a heavy-handed polemic but as a frothy noir merringue that still manages to offer timely (and timeless) critique of our national propensity toward ugliness, be it in the form of sexism, racial profiling, class distinctions, ageism, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, crass marketing, leveraging abject fear to erode any and all civil liberties, or, yes, speciesism.

If George Orwell’s Animal Farm had been reimagined by Bugs Bunny‘s Chuck Jones, you’d have Zootopia, as close to classic Looney Tunes‘ satirical irreverence as middle-class-family-friendly Disney may ever get. 

“Zootopia” (the place) is an urbane promised land where anthropomorphic animals of all species coexist amicably – think Richard Scarry’s Busytown on steroids or Watership Down, Jr., with predator and prey working and playing side-by-side and setting a far better example than humans can ever seem to manage. Zootopia is a Manhattan-esque place, brimming with hustle and bustle, composed of boroughs distinguished by their unique climates (e.g. polar, rainforest, desert, etc.)

Judy Hopps (effervescently voiced by Once Upon a Time‘s Ginnifer Goodwin) is a brave bunny who defies her expected station (as a carrot farmer) to become a cop (a role typically taken by larger, more aggressive male creatures, like cheetahs and buffalo). As in human life, Hopps is quickly marginalized (for her gender and her size) by her co-workers, assigned the menial task of traffic duty.

Yet, something dire is afoot in this magical land, and the balance of animalia power is challenged as traditional “predator” animals revert to more violent ways of the past. (This is still a Disney movie, so that basically means angry eyes and lots and lots of snarling.) Lt. Hopps seizes the moment, and, with the aid of a con man fox named Nick Wilde (Bad Words‘ Jason Bateman, finding his animated doppelganger), cracks the case.

Or do they? That‘s really where the cheeky fun begins as the third act of the film inverts all of our notions of Zootopia, landing a stinging indictment of how society offers a phony face of inclusion and acceptance as long as things run smoothly with safety, security, and prosperity ostensibly guaranteed for all.  The minute the “natural order” (which we mindlessly take for granted) is revealed as the wobbly house of cards it actually can be, all bets are off, and life starts to resemble a Trump rally or a Promise Keepers meeting or Hitler’s Nuremberg, with fiery, fearful rhetoric of us-versus-them, boundary walls, torture, and police states. Zootopia – accidentally or intentionally or both – holds a mirror to this truth and presents its audience, young and old, a cautionary hopefulness that we can still pull ourselves from the mire.

Yet, the magic of this film (not unlike similarly smart animated fare like The Lego Movie, Inside Out, or Wall*E) is that the message never comes at the expense of entertainment  (maximizing impact and influence). This picture is just so. much. fun. In addition to Goodwin and Bates, there is sparkling voice work from Thor‘s Idris Elba (Police Chief Bogo, a blustering water buffalo), Whiplash‘s J.K. Simmons (Mayor Lionheart, a scheming king of the jungle), Jenny Slate (Bellwether, the mayor’s browbeaten lamb assistant … lion and the lamb, get it?), Nate Torrence (Officer Clawhauser, a dispatch policeman cheetah for whom food is quite literally love), and Alan Tudyk (Duke Weaselton, a shifty little informant weasel). Uni-named pop star Shakira rounds out the cast playing uni-named pop star Gazelle, nailing some witty moments as a well-intentioned if misguided celebrity trying to bring cross-cultural unity through superficial lip-service. (Sounds like some recent Oscar speeches, eh?)

Zootopia is a visually stunning film throughout, and one viewing will unlikely do justice to the rich detail (and hidden references) of this animal planet. Directors Byron Howard and Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph) have realized a sumptuously immersive world here that is simultaneously transporting and sobering. Mayor Lionheart exclaims, “We may be evolved, but deep down we’re still animals.” These words (other than the disparaging implication of “animal”) are as true (if not truer) of we humans, struggling through as fractious an historical moment as many of us may see in our lifetimes. Zootopia may just be the tonic we all have needed. Lt. Hopps notes repeatedly through the film – as much warning as mantra: “Zootopia … where anyone can be anything!” Maybe we Americans should give that idea a shot again? What do you think?

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img_0083Enjoy this recent radio show, featuring The Penny Seats (and yours truly!) … “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris: Feelings that Connect Us All” – https://t.co/E9YMfoZN0C

Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan.  My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.

“The U.S. Army might not care about art, but they sure as sh*t care about gold!” The Monuments Men

16 February 2014

11 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

I am the sort of person that, if I see a forlorn Lego mini-figure abandoned in a snowy mud puddle as I’m leaving the movie theatre, will “rescue” it, put it in my pocket, wash it off when I get home, and set it on a shelf in our over-crowded basement alongside sundry other “misfit toys.”

(Yeah, that happened tonight.)

So, George Clooney’s latest directorial effort The Monuments Men, in which a ragtag team of sentimentally minded art lovers bands together to snatch classic sculptures, paintings, and other works from the fiendish grip of the Nazis in World War II, spoke to this “leave no stuff behind” part of my soul. (I likely need an intervention.)

A less rambunctious hybrid of Raiders of the Lost Art, Inglourious Basterds, National Treasure, and Clooney’s own Ocean’s 11 trilogy, The Monuments Men is b-movie silliness disguised as a “based on true events” prestige picture. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The plot, which is a bit wispy, concerns Clooney’s character convening a number of his aging buddies (museum curators, architects, and scholars who include Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Matt Damon, Hugh Bonneville, Jean Dujardin, and John Goodman) for one last great adventure, taking on Nazi forces in the latter days of the war and returning lost works to their original owners (both private collectors and museums).

Y’see, the film posits that Hitler, a failed painter turned insane dictator, is hoarding as much of Europe’s great art as he can get his grubby mitts on, aiming to populate a proposed “Fuhrer Museum” with his haul. I don’t know how accurate that is – it very well may be – but it conveniently offers the film its “stop Darth Vader’s Death Star at all costs” whiz bang roller coaster motivation.

The film does stop periodically in its “gang of great joes making the world safe for democracy/creativity” whimsy to ground us in the stark realities of the era (albeit rather superficially). A few characters do not emerge unscathed; we see varied references to the darkest atrocities of the Nazi regime; and Clooney, at the film’s conclusion, has a marvelous speech delivered to a captured SS officer sharply illustrating both the broad scope and ugly futility of Hitler’s hate-filled tyranny.

Largely, however, the film is a frolic and a throwback to a simpler cinematic era. In fact, some of the movie’s most salient observations emerge from comic throwaway lines. At one point, when “The Monuments Men” (they actually were called that) unearth a ton of gold bricks (the entire Nazi treasury) alongside some stolen art, the joint chiefs swoop in and take credit for the find. Goodman intones, “The U.S. Army might not care about art, but they sure as sh*t care about gold.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have to say that I adore latter-day Bill Murray (I wasn’t as much a fan of his younger days, post-Saturday Night Live.) He has transitioned from shaggy, petulant misanthrope to a warm, world-weary presence. Maybe I am just as exhausted by this planet now as he has always been, but I find his gentle emotional dyspepsia completely identifiable. He even accomplished the impossible for me and made his film sidekick Bob Balaban tolerable … and even kinda cute.

Cate Blanchett, so good in the recent Blue Jasmine, has another great, if more understated turn here, as a frustrated art curator who may or may not be a Nazi sympathizer. She has to pull off a tricky part that is one part 40s spitfire moll, one part “Marian the Librarian,” and two parts tortured aesthete. She does a fine job, quietly grating and heartbreaking at the same time.

Continuing my track record of crying at the darndest movies, I found myself weepy (and snotty) a couple of times. (I won’t tell you where, though one may involve Jean Dujardin and a horse and one may include Clooney’s aforementioned speech.) Yup, add The Monuments Men alongside Star Trek Into Darkness, Captain Phillips, and even The Lego Movie as films that made me (and likely no other humans on the planet) cry.