I’m an ardent fan of both Disney and Pixar’s animated films. The original “Disney Renaissance” coincided with my childhood; as did Pixar’s meteoric rise to rival Disney before the former’s acquisition by the latter. So it’s no surprise to me that Zootopia is easily the best film I’ve seen so far this year. Perhaps that’s because it's one of two new films I’ve seen thus far...but still! Disney has made another fantastic film that will only continue to bolster the “Second Disney Renaissance”. Zootopia is a fast paced, exciting, and funny animated film with a surprising amount of depth.

Zootopia gives us little background about how this world came to be. Suffice to say that there are no humans in this universe, only animals. The two broad classes of animals--predators and prey, have “evolved beyond their savage ways”, and now live and work together. Our story focuses on a naive female bunny, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) as she attempts to become the first bunny police officer of Zootopia ever. To her Zootopia is the city of her dreams where, “anyone can be anything.” The film wastes no time, going from childhood, to police training, to first day on the force in the first third of the film. The narrative becomes clear as Judy is forced to work with a slick con artist fox, Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to solve a difficult case that unravels into a larger sinister conspiracy of predators mysteriously “going savage”.