Zootropolis: Anti-PC animal caper is 2016's 'best film yet'

Zootropolis, Disney's new 3D-animated animal caper movie which has taken the US box office by storm, opens in the UK for the Easter holidays – and critics are hopping up and down about it.

The film, known as Zootopia in the US, was created by directing duo Byron Howard and Richard Moore (Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph) and features the voices of Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman and Idris Elba. It's set in animal utopia, where all creatures, great and small, predator and prey, live in harmony - or do they?

The story follows an unlikely friendship between rookie rabbit cop Judy Hopps (Goodwin) and red fox con-artist Nick Wilde (Bateman), who has been wrongly accused of a crime. The duo uncover a conspiracy involving missing animals, but Hopps fights to be taken seriously by her sexist water buffalo boss (Elba).

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Zootropolis has been a huge box office hit in the US, on the scale of Frozen, but critics have also gone ape over it, saying it is a "classic", surprisingly sophisticated and enjoyably un-PC.

This anthropomorphised tale, where mammals have evolved into a bustling, civilised society, is "vividly realised, richly detailed and very funny", says John Nugent in Empire. It also goes places other Disney films don't, he adds.

The story, which uncovers a this-goes-all-the-way-to-the-top conspiracy, raises interesting questions over what it means to evolve past your biology, continues the critic. In a city where former bestial foes share an uncomfortable truce, it "serves as a smart analogy for debates on immigration", a domain where Disney rarely ventures, he notes.

True, there's nothing new about talking animals in a Disney film, says Dave Calhoun in Time Out, but this "sparky animation takes the idea somewhere fresh and lively by giving us a distinctly human world".

Zootropolis is "intelligent and fascinatingly detailed", with a manic energy that will appeal to young viewers but with some "fantastic set-pieces" for older audiences. "Who needs humans?" he adds.

Indeed, it "excels on so many levels that it stands with the finest of the Disney classics" and it is the year's best film so far, says Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. More like the best offerings from sister studio, Pixar, this is "very sophisticated entertainment", he argues.

Lumenick adds that the film, with its pointed parable about female empowerment and racial tolerance, "makes the message go down with less than a spoonful of sugar".

It has a message, but Zootropolis is also "witty, tasty and in the best sense bad-tastey" – that is iconoclastic and sanctimony spoofing, says Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times. The crime story is so complex it makes Inherent Vice seem like noughts and crosses, he warns, but still urges audiences to "relish the zingy jokes" and "pacy, racy disrespect for PC of all hues and flavours".

There's a slow-burn dialogue scene with sloths, that's an instant classic, says Andrews: "Whatever did we do to deserve it for Easter?"