If you’re ever at a cocktail party (in my mind all cocktail parties are held in ridiculous mansions and everyone is wearing those masquerade masks with the long noses like doctors used to wear to not get the plague, even though by definition that’s a masquerade ball, not a cocktail party. I don’t know why, or if that’s relevant to this introduction) and the conversation is stalling and you want to look cultured and intellectual you might try bringing up something to the tune of: should critics review from their own perspectives, or should they attempt to review from the perspective of the intended audience?

It’s a question that’s worth asking, ‘worth’ being used in the narrow confines of movies mattering, because on the one hand critics are supposed to be the arbiters of taste, criticism is supposed to be an art form onto itself, one that then holds other art forms to a higher standard.

On the other hand criticism is an art form that more than any other art form is intended for an audience (all art is intended for an audience, holding a mirror to society and all that but then people make deeply introspective, pretentious messes (and not the good kind) that get emperor’s new clothes-ed to profundity) because it is supposed to inform its audience’s decisions about becoming the audience of something else.

So when the latest big budget blockbuster comes out and critics invariably rag on it because admittedly at best it can be called competent and more likely a two hundred million dollar mess that prizes spectacle above all else, often becoming a boring orgy (the worst kind of orgy) of incomprehensible, obviously fake CGI set pieces, where the shots could be re-assembled in any order without drastically changing the scene. (They will often be wrong on the characterization front though. Critics always say there isn’t any, when there is, almost without fail, too much characterization. It’s just that it’s of the shitty variety and stops you from getting to the CGI set pieces which are often, if anything, more boring than they say)

The above movie will probably make money though. Maybe not it’s budget, or it’s budget plus marketing, and the point’s moot anyway because Hollywood has some killer accountants that can make almost anything look like a loss, stopping those greedy writers whose books they are adapting from getting their grubby hands on any of that sweet, sweet net money, but more money than the average person will ever see in their life, unless they stumble upon a drug deal gone south in the desert and get caught up in one of those terrible Hollywood movies, maybe with a black guy who deserves better?

Which speaks to how critics tend to be out of touch with the movie going public, or, hyper conscious movie watchers who are passionate about their jobs vs. John Q. Public who’s trying to shut off their brain and escape from the drudgery of the accounting firm/assembly line/proctology clinic.

All that to say this might be for the best. Critics could try to review things from the point of view of the intended audience (other topics you can bring up are: deciphering the intended audience (ex. blockbusters are for everyone, so critics have a duty to include strands of race, feminist and Marxist film theory, to speak to the tastes of women, the poor, and in an attempt to annoy everyone without being provably racist a group I’m just going to bestow with the moniker ‘the ethnics’. Hopefully you’ll have a liberal and a conservative and not only will the onus for continued dialogue be removed from your shoulders, but your dreary cocktail party will be exciting for once) and mood of the critic affecting the outcome of the review (ex. they had to watch eight modern parody movies for a think piece so now by comparison American White Male 2: This Time it’s Black Terrorists is a masterpiece of the art form vs. they’ve just marathoned eight movies by a Swedish Art House hack because they’re unimaginative, so Indestructible Superhero 3: We Passed the Bechdel Test but are Still Shockingly Sexist, is a travesty)) but as is the average critical review is brought up in one of two dialogues:

A:

1: Swords And Sandles Epic: The Whitewashing is getting terrible reviews

2: Well of course it is, critics hate everything, those stuffy bastards

(Dialogue isn’t my forte)

B:

1: Improv Heavy Comedy: Yes, It Would Kill Us to Have a Visual Gag is getting great reviews

2: Awesome, I’m stoked for that movie.

Some people were always going to see it, some people were never going to see it, the critical reviews are at best just for the inbetweeners, who will inevitably see it at some point because modern culture is a blue light soaked Kaiju who eats us all in the end and any critic who thinks they can become King Kong with a Macbook is just lying to themselves, which frees up criticism to try to hold movies to a higher standard, independent of the intended audience (of criticism, which is either everyone or no one) who is watching the movie based on gut opinion based either off the trailer, the actors, or increasingly the pre-existing property.

There, you’re now prepared for the conversational part of the cocktail party (in a pinch you can bring up the increased role of social media in marketing, but that may require research on your part. May because you could probably just bullshit your way through because no one cares what you say, you’re just there to round out the numbers) and can move on to whatever comes next (I never get that far in my mind, but it’s either dinner or a sex party) and I can get to my point, which is how to review Zootopia?

Do you attempt to review it from the point of view of a child? That’s easy. They’ll either love it and consider it their favourite movie for the next couple of weeks, or whenever you shell out fifty bucks for some sort of tie in toy, in a grim irony likely made by a member of the intended audience who will never get to see the movie, or they’ll hate it, or they’ll like it, but they’re twelve so they’ll pretend to hate it until they’re eighteen at which point they might think it’s merely ok, but they’ll pretend to like it because they think it makes them part of the counter culture, which it very, very much does not.

It’s not like kids are going to watch this movie alone though, which opens up the review to speak to parental/babysitting adult tastes, though again we come back to are they the intended audience, or do they just want to carve out a two hour block on their shit to kill time until I can sleep again list?

Zootopia is also a mystery, which opens the review more, but not much more because I don’t think this movie is for mystery fans, not that it matters because I’m not one and despite all the faux intellectual posturing above, my gaze is fixed squarely on mine own navel.

So let’s jump off from there shall we?

From the perspective of a 23 year old, on a Saturday afternoon, with nothing better to do, and a deep apathy towards ninety percent of what I come across in a given day, Zootopia is fine.

The movie wasn’t boring. The characters weren’t the deepest there ever was, but they were a far cry from the cardboard cutout whose daddy issues are supposed to imbue depth upon every instance of terrorist face shootery.

I am more or less of the opinion that Jason Bateman can do no wrong and Ginnifer Goodwin is great as Judy Hopps. Also Idris Elba is in the movie, and it’s always nice to see him getting work.

There is some interesting world building in the movie, though it’s more an extrapolation of things we’ve already seen in animated talking animal movies than something new, and while some of the world building is visual, it doesn’t come close to the Fury Road benchmark.

I looked up spoilers before the movie, not sure why, probably because I didn’t care, possibly because my video game addled millennial brain has no concept of delayed gratification, but is a movie really worth it if all it has going for it is the reveal? CSI might run in endless syndication but is anyone actively watching episodes they’ve already seen if they remember the ending?

I don’t actually know, but I think it would be kind of silly if they were.

Mysteries run into a re-watchability problem because after figuring out the reveal and maybe another run through for clues what’s left? They need something else to have staying power (another conversation for your party, is staying power a necessity of a good movie, or only a great one; also, is a good movie enough (your answer should be yes, anyone who says otherwise is a self righteous ass clown, unless they’re not in which case I’m the self righteous ass clown).

Again the above paragraphs are moot because this is the type of mystery that the viewer solves through things like conservation of character and that thing in every mystery ever where it’s clearly not the first person they arrest and absolutely no one thinks this movie is going to be resolved in 40 minutes stop doing that it’s not good writing and you’re not tricking the audience.

The staying power elements are meant to be humour and a message. This is after all a children’s movie about prejudice, both in the sense that it is a movie, aimed at children, about prejudice, and it is a children’s move about prejudice, the kind where prejudice is bad and the main character figures that out because someone who was prejudice against them grew out of it.

I guess I shouldn’t undersell it, one of the characters was discriminated against and decided that if those stereotypes were going to be applied to them, he was going to live up to them, which is an intriguing idea, one that the movie doesn’t delve into too deeply, but then, it probably shouldn’t.

On the humour front the movie was fine. I don’t remember many jokes, but I also don’t remember many failing. The Sloth DMV is that rare case of putting the funniest moment in the commercial and it still being funny in the movie (I’m beginning to wonder if a cocktail party is just a party where you stand around and drink cocktails and talk until the Joker shows up and then Bruce Wayne leaves and Batman shows up (side note: has anyone ever seen those two together?) and you might need more conversational ammunition so try lamenting the lack of visual humour in modern comedies, and maybe something about how humour is all about build up and pay off and by having jokes centered around slow moving creatures you’re allowed to both stretch out build up AND make build up and pay off one and the same. Perhaps also babble on about some bullshit about internal logic). Less rare is the movie becoming less funny in the more plot heavy third act, though I found it less boring than normal.

One thing I do remember finding sort of funny, though it was a how did they sign off on this, unintentional, decidedly non-PC, spoilerish (I don’t think it will ruin the experience to read on, but do you) sort of funny, came from delving a little deeper into the thinly veiled metaphors the animals stood for, and the stereotypes that were applied to them.

When I first saw it I said that the movie was about the police force’s first female officer teaming up with a Jewish street hustler to stop black female Hitler from turning everyone against the Jews.

I realize now that it’s more like the first female officer teaming up with a Jewish street hustler to stop a black woman in public office who’s trying to turn the world against the 1%, which if anything is more problematic.

It doesn’t fit perfectly though, most animals seem to have an amalgamation of stereotypes applied against them, and these things probably weren’t meant to be delved that far into, it is a kids movie after all.