As a fan of Disney movies, I tend to keep up with the next ones coming to theaters, especially those long awaited sequels like “Finding Dory” (coming 2017).  In early March, Disney released Zootopia.  My first assumption of Zootopia was that it was targeted for very young audiences, about ages 3-9, based on the title and what others have said. I was pleasantly proven wrong and would recommend this to any children or adults. Zootopia is about a world where all types of animals live together in harmony and can all walk and talk. The main character’s name is Judy, a rabbit, and

The main character’s name is Judy, a rabbit, and aspiring police officer. (She lives on a farm with her family in a surrounding suburb.) After going into the police academy and graduating top of her class, she gets a job in the heart of Zooptopia, doing what she has always dreamed of. Judy soon realizes that most of the other officers are not like her; they’re large animals, such lions, elephants, and tigers. Instead of being assigned to regular police work, she is laughingly given the job of meter maid. To prove herself to her superiors (and family) she takes on the responsibility of finding a missing otter when she meets and befriends a fox along the way. The thing that makes this

The thing that makes this movie stand out the message it gives. Every animal has a different stereotype, such as small, harmless animals are nice and do-gooders while the larger, carnivore types have a negative name for them, predators. After Judy accuses an outbreak of predators turning rabid on their genetic predisposition, the whole city turns on them, making them the most hated. Without being heavy-handed or overly saccharine, Disney made a movie about the dangers of racism and stereotyping. There are a lot of parallels to this theme and (spoiler alert!!) the reasons the predator animals went rabid was NOT because of their breed (spoiler over). To me, this is such a good message to children not to bias animals (people) on their breed (color of their skin).