I Hate Everything doesn’t seem to hate Zootopia!

May 26, 2017 Andy Lagopus News, Video 6

I Hate Everything, in a shocking turn of events, seems to like something!  I know, it contradicts his name, but Zootopia appears to be on his list of movies he actually legitimately enjoys.

What makes me think this?  Well, in his newest video, I HATE SING (2016), he goes into great detail about how… wait for it… he hates Sing.  During his very entertaining critique of Illumination Entertainment’s latest film, he compares it to another movie starring anthropomorphic animals that came out in 2016: Angry Birds Zootopia.

He uses the example of Zootopia to illustrate how there is absolutely no reason for the characters to be animals, and how Illumination wasted any potential for humor or character development based on this.  He claims that in Sing, the animals all do human things with zero acknowledgement of their animal traits, and that all the characters could be replaced with “grey goo people”.  However, in Zootopia, he points out that the characters being animals “Is the entire point of the movie”.  He then praises it further, saying “The people who made Zootopia actually had an idea for a movie”.

Now, why should you care what some guy on the internet has to say about Zootopia?  I dunno. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.  But he has got over 1 million subscribers on Youtube, so he’s a relatively big internet celebrity (of sorts).  Him saying good things about Zootopia on his channel, which is all about ripping apart terrible movies (as seen in his Search For The Worst series), is a pretty good thing in my book.  Plus his videos are fun, whether you agree with him or not.

Check out the video for yourself after the break, and let us know what you thought about Sing compared to Zootopia in the comments!  The part where he begins asking “Why are they animals” starts at 11:15, and the comparison to Zootopia comes at 12:36.

6 Comments

  1. Having watched many of the videos in the Search for the Worst series (mostly to see if there are any colossally bad movies I am unfamiliar with), I'm glad to see this got featured here. One of the standard tests for movies featuring humanoid animals is whether there is a good justification for the characters being animals instead of human beings. If a movie doesn't past this test, then it's lackluster in at least one significant aspect (i.e., a lazy or unmotivated script) and probably other ways as well. Perhaps surprisingly, a lot of movies in this sub-genre do not past this test. Sing certainly doesn't, and even some classics don't. The Great Mouse Detective and Robin Hood, for example, could have arguably been just as good if they were told with an entirely human cast (and that's not too surprising since they are based on the adventures of the human characters Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hood). The most exceptional films in this sub-genre usually have powerful reasons for why the characters are anthropomorphic. In Ratatouille, for instance, Remy's being a rat is central not only to the plot but also to one of the core themes — that great art can come from anyone — since his being a rat presents massive obstacles to him becoming an accomplished chef.

    Too often, movies get the anthro-animal makeover just to broaden the demographics that they can potentially appeal to. Making the film characters cuter and more kid-friendly typically results in better returns at the box office. That seems like the primary motivation for making the characters in Sing humanoid animals. Honestly, I expected that Zootopia would turn out to be the same way when it was released. The urban setting and clear parallels with contemporary human society made me think it would be much closer to the quality of a film like Over the Hedge rather than a masterpiece on a par with Ratatouille. I thought it would be decent but forgettable and thematically simplistic. That's the main reason why I never saw Zootopia in theaters — a decision that I have since come to regard as a grievous error in judgment.

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