Movie Review: "Hoppers" Is A Hop In The Right Direction For Pixar
9/12 ForReel Score | 3.5/5 Stars
After I saw last year’s Elio—one of Pixar’s increasingly few and far between original films—I was sure that it would be a hit. Turns out, Elio had the lowest opening weekend in the thirty years that the animation juggernaut has been around. Some credit the parallel release to the live-action Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon remakes, but The Hollywood Reporter later revealed that the film’s narrative was “sand[ed] down” by Pixar execs due to the queer subtext of Elio’s original cut. Between box-office and studio interference, the overall disappointment of Elio certainly had me raising eyebrows about the latest Pixar original, Hoppers. I don’t want to jinx anything, but Hoppers could be the bounce-back that Pixar has direly needed.
Hoppers follows Mabel, a longtime environmental activist, as she tries to preserve a glade by her late grandmother’s house by going undercover as a beaver. What immediately sets Hoppers apart from the more recent Pixar films is that the love imbued into its script is genuinely palpable and effective. Aside from the fittingly soulful Soul, Pixar has leaned more towards the entertainment side than its trademark balance of feels and fun; in short, they don’t really hit like they used to. Hoppers circumvents falling to the wayside by keeping the emotional core at the forefront, tying the Avatar-style human-in-beaver-clothing antics with how Mabel’s grandma influenced her childhood. It’s a fun kids’ movie in its own right, but it’s also got quite the punch.
Most of that punch comes courtesy of We Bare Bears creator, writer, and storyboard artist Daniel Chong in his first theatrical feature. Before joining Pixar’s Senior Creative Team, Chong worked on Cars 2 and Inside Out alongside several made-for-TV projects, until he left the studio to pursue We Bare Bears. Chong’s expressive art style and casual, character-first writing made We Bare Bears an instant favorite when I was a kid, with those sensibilities translating beautifully to the big screen. Working within the traditional Pixar artstyle, Chong’s direction of human characters and fauna alike is dynamic and expressive, with the needlefelt fur textures looking particularly warm and fuzzy. The animals’ eyes change shape based on whether Mabel is disguised or not, which, of course, is nothing short of adorable.
Leading the cast are Piper Curda and Bobby Moynihan (who previously worked with Chong on We Bare Bears) as Mabel and King George, an unlikely duo consisting of a human masquerading as a beaver and an actual beaver. Pixar movies have always hinged on unlikely duos, and, though Mabel and George aren’t the next Mike and Sully, there’s enough natural rapport between them to carry Hoppers to the finish line. Although I don’t think Moynihan has secured a spot on Mount Rushmore, he’s definitely made King George immediately lovable. He serves as a great counter to Mabel’s hot temper, and their friendship is the crux of Hoppers’ narrative. The objective: stop Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) from building a highway where the glade once was.
Call it a coincidence or call it market trends, but there have been some great eco-oriented animated films as of late. 2024’s The Wild Robot and Flow (both nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars last year, with the latter taking home the statue) examined our relationship with nature and the looming threat of environmental cataclysm. Hoppers similarly shares those tree-hugging sensibilities, but doesn’t hit the emotional highs of The Wild Robot or the Chaplin-esque physicality of Flow. That said, Hoppers may be the most outright fun out of the three, making for a pretty well-rounded triple-bill. The mere premise of doing a Freaky Friday-type plot between animals, humans, and robots that look like animals is an interesting enough sandbox to play in, with a hilarious twist coming from a totally unhinged Dave Franco.
The narrative’s core charm is how a standard “save the trees” plot snowballs into Mission: Impossible schemes, industrial sabotage, and a Very Angry Caterpillar whose butterfly mom is voiced by Meryl Streep. The lean into absurdity almost feels like an apology from Pixar execs for not letting their creatives run wild enough, but it works with both confidence and self-awareness; I honestly can’t name a funnier Pixar film that’s come out in recent memory. Maybe I’ve been attuned to Daniel Chong’s humor after being a fan of We Bare Bears, but his sense of humor remains as sharp as ever.
Is Hoppers the turnaround Pixar needs to regain its previously untouchable stature? Not really, but maybe I’m just preventing myself from jinxing it as I did with Elio. Hoppers feels relatively uncompromised and fresh compared to the recent swath of Pixar sequels (do we really need another Incredibles?), effectively balancing entertainment and emotion to the animation studio’s signature splendid effect. Growing up makes you lose touch with the demographic you used to belong to, making Hoppers' success a coin flip rather than a surefire guarantee. I enjoyed this enough as a partially-jaded twenty-three-year-old, so I can only hope that kids half my age will have as much fun as I did. The magic of Pixar, though, is that while their main target audience is children, they make sure the adults have fun, too. And, by God, fun is exactly what I had.