“What is your problem? Does seeing me fail somehow make you feel better about your own sad, miserable life?”

“It does. 100%.”

The first Zootopia is about a bunny by the name of Judy Hopps, who moves to the city of Zootopia, essentially the land of opportunity, in order to accomplish her dream of becoming a police officer, and the first bunny one to be specific. Everyone doubts her from the start, and when she arrives in Zootopia, she is met with even more challenges, where, despite becoming an official officer and getting her badge, she is assigned to do parking duty instead, since she is a bunny. However, she quickly learns about a missing case where she is the only officer left available to solve it, and with the help of one of the only leads to figuring out this case, she gets the help of a stubborn fox by the name of Nick Wilde.

I haven’t seen this movie in years, but I wanted to revisit it before watching the sequel. I was honestly surprised by not only how much of the movie I remembered, but how much it entertained me and resonated with me on this watch. I found myself really relating to the main character, Judy Hopps, as I’m kind of in a similar situation that she was in at the beginning, right now. I’m personally in a spot at the moment where I’m pretty sure that I know what I want to do with my life, but am reluctant to just “go for it,” because I don’t know how realistic it is. Seeing Judy, in fact, go for it, was actually pretty inspiring to me.

Speaking of Judy, she is a great main protagonist because of how relatable she is. While her story hit harder for me because of where I’m at right now, it’s a story (or character arc) that should be relatable for almost everyone. I think we’ve all had our moments in life where we’ve wanted to do something, but were too afraid to take the risk. Judy’s also very likable and admirable with how much effort she is willing to put into her work, not only with becoming a police officer who is actually respected, but with solving this case.

The other main protagonist, a fox named Nick Wilde, is also fantastic. He’s a little stubborn and frustrating at first, but quickly becomes a very funny and likable character. As the movie goes along, we learn more about his past, and he becomes more and more compelling because of it. He provides a good contrast to Judy, being more complex than her, while still having a good heart at the end of the day. Together, they make a terrific “buddy cop” sort of duo, and their friendship is probably the standout of the film because, despite their differences, they make things work in order to try and solve this missing case.

The story has a surprisingly excellent mystery to it for a family film. I remember being intrigued by it when I watched it growing up, and I was intrigued this time. I don’t want to talk about it too much, but it’s essentially about these animals that keep having mysterious things happen to them, leading to them going missing. It really ties into one of the core main themes of the story, being stereotypes and how we sometimes misleadingly judge others. It’s also a surprisingly serious story for a Disney animated family/kids movie. It gets darker than you would probably think it would get, and there are some pretty intense scenes, with even some jump scares, here and there. I totally dig that about it, because I don’t think it ever goes too far for kids, but goes far enough that adults can enjoy it.

Another thing that surprised me, though, was how funny it was. There were some serious gags in the movie that had me laughing, as I remember as a little kid, especially towards the beginning of the movie. One of the funnier bits was all the stuff where you figure out what Nick is really doing early on, but the funniest thing of all was all the cultural references, particularly one to a certain critically-acclaimed movie that most children wouldn’t catch.

The last thing I’ll talk about in this section is something that I absolutely cannot forget to mention. This film has some shockingly fantastic worldbuilding, making it hard for me to understand why it took so long to get a sequel. Once you arrive in Zootopia in the story, it really is all it was built up to be, and is not only fantastic to look at, but is a really cool concept on its own. My favorite thing about it is all the little subareas for the different-sized animals, but really, everything about it is neat. It’s a world that you look at and want to explore, which is the main goal, I would say, with worldbuilding.

Really, the only negative I have is a minor one, and it’s one that might not even be worth noting since it’s in pretty much every movie marketed towards kids out there. The story definitely relies on a lot of coincidences/conveniences to keep its plot moving, and for some character development. It doesn’t go overboard at all like a lot of other kids’ movies, but it’s still something to mention. Other than that, though, this doesn’t really have any other issues for me, and, to my absolute surprise, it stands the test of time as one of my favorite animated movies.