By Mack Doebler, Online Editor

Imagine a world where anybody can be anything they want to be and diversity is both unique and shared among all inhabitants. It sounds pretty rad, doesn’t it? This is exactly what the city of Zootopia is like.

The newest film from directors Byron Howard (“Bolt” and “Tangled”), Rich Moore (“Wreck-it Ralph”) and Jared Bush is an imaginative buddy cop film all about prejudices — which isn’t something you hear every day. The movie has gained ground in the box offices on “Frozen,” which obviously means that people love it. So that means it’s a good movie, right?

Let’s investigate.

“Zootopia” follows a young bunny cop named Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) who always dreamed of becoming a police officer in the famed city of Zootopia. From a young age, she is told she will never be anything more than a carrot farmer, like her rabbit ancestors before her, but she toughens up and proves her critics wrong. When she arrives in the city she learns about a missing persons case that extends to 14 missing animals, all predators.

When Hopps arrives at the police station, she is greeted with the irresistible responsibility of … parking duty. Hopps protests, citing the massive missing mammals as fair reason for her to be placed on a more serious case. Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) sees her as little more than a young cop of the prey variety. Most officers are predators, and many think that because of Hopps’ species, she won’t be sufficient for the job. On top of that initial prejudice, Hopps appears to be the only female on the force at the time. It seems as though the conservative belief that women are more frail than males also plays a role in Bogo’s decision.

Keeping true to the “Zootopia” theme, Hopps proves Chief Bogo wrong when chance lands her a spot on the missing mammal case. In truth, she might be the best officer on the force. Gender and species has absolutely nothing to do with it.

“Zootopia” is funny, there is no doubt about it. Clever jokes about rabbits multiplying or the mafia don shrew, Mr. Big (Maurice LaMarche) keep the audience laughing throughout the film. Over-the-top characters command attention and the quirky nature that everybody possesses keeps viewers engaged and critics laughing.

The attention to detail in “Zootopia” is careful, creative and practical. Everything within the world looks as though it is meant to be there and has a function. The city has all kinds of different sections and services to cater to the many different sizes of animals that live in the city. Details like this are never flat out mentioned, but shown. For example, viewers aren’t told that the city transit has multiple door sizes to fit all animals; it is shown when Hopps heads off to the city for the first time. This puts an emphasis on the fantastic artistic style and benefits the overall quality of the movie.

Everything that goes into making the characters is believable and creates a fascinating cast. The voice acting never falls flat. The characters vary in size — from tiny lemmings to giant elephants — and personality. The diversity of the characters ties in with the film’s overarching theme: Acceptance.

At its core, “Zootopia” is a movie about prejudices and the terrible places that it can lead a community. Throughout the movie, the idea of predators being savage angry animals and prey being innocent little creatures is apparent, despite the film pointing out that animals had grown out of their savage nature and could live alongside each other in peace. Some characters, like Hopps’ parents, have a prejudice against foxes. Others just see all predators as vile creatures.

The only problem I have with “Zootopia” is its almost contradictory nature. The movie tells us to have respect for the animals and not to pick on them specifically for what kind of animal they are, but most of the clever puns in the movie do just that. They exploit the animals for their quirky behavior, like the rabbits multiplying, contagiously howling wolves or follow-the-leader lemmings.

These jokes are funny and because they are about animals (which are sooo much less sophisticated than us humans), it’s easy for us to accept the jokes and laugh at them. However, if we look at the animals in the same way as they would look at themselves, in the same way that they are portrayed, we see that these jokes should not be funny. The animals react to each other more like humans would, and when humans make jokes about each other based upon generalizations, the world usually sees it as a form of racism. Not all of the jokes rely on this tactic, but the fact that some do presents a strange contradiction in the film’s writing.

Strangely enough, one of the more memorable characters, Clawhauser, (Nate Torrence) does not follow this trend. Clawhauser is a cheetah — but he is the furthest thing from lightning fast. He’s obsessed with pop icon Gazelle (Shakira) and eats way more donuts than any sane anthropomorphic cat would. His joke defies the stereotype set for the cheetah, which goes together nicely with the defy-stereotyping theme of “Zootopia”.

Having a theme as timely and heavy as prejudices in a film for kids is fantastic. Good parents always know to teach their young ones to accept others from an early age. When media reinforces those ethics, it builds the concepts in the minds of young people which, in theory, creates a better tomorrow.

The message is not just for kids, though. Any age is the right age to realize the folly in prejudice, and whether you are 7 or 777, respecting others is a lesson you ought to learn.

Overall, “Zootopia” is a great movie and guaranteed fun for kids and adults, as long as you don’t think too hard about the paradoxical nature that some of the jokes create. It is inspired, intriguing and positively influential. All that said, I wasn’t really digging the flagship song, “Try Everything”, by Shakira. Maybe that’s just because I am a music elitist and gitchy pop toons just don’t do it for me.

Then again, after watching “Zootopia,” it might be a good idea to leave my biases behind.

“Zootopia” was released on March 4 and is rated PG. It is currently playing at R/C Kill Devil Hills Movies 10.