I got a little overhyped for "Hoppers," which is a pretty typical piece of children's entertainment when all is said and done, but it's definitely gutsier than most recent PIXAR films, and it's nice to see audiences responding so well to it. I'll spoil the basic premise for this review, but will do my best not to get into the particulars of the plotting or give away any of the good jokes. The less you know going into this one, the better.
Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) is a hotheaded college student who is staunchly devoted to protecting nature and animals. She is especially keen on saving the glen and beaver pond where she spent much of her childhood with her beloved grandmother (Karen Huie), and where a new freeway extension is set to be built by the stubborn Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm). One day, Mabel stumbles upon a secret project called "Hoppers" being carried out by her mentor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy). She and her team have built robot animals that peoples' conscious minds can "hop" into "like 'Avatar.'" Mabel puts herself into a beaver robot and sets out in search of the glen's missing animals, eventually uncovering a dastardly plot. Other characters include the beaver king, George (Bobby Moynihan), an antagonistic caterpillar, Titus (Dave Franco), an intimidating bear named Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor), and another beaver named Loaf (Eduardo Franco), who is maybe a little too chill.
Initial trailers for "Hoppers" made the film look very similar to "The Wild Robot," which was also about a robot and a community of woodland creatures in the Pacific Northwest. "The Wild Robot" even felt like a PIXAR movie more than a Dreamworks one, featuring heartwarming found family connections and meditations on parenthood. "Hoppers" has some of this too, with Piper struggling with the loss of her grandmother, and forging new friendships. However, "Hoppers" also has a lot of comedy in it. And not just comedy, but zany, off-the-wall, we're-in a-cartoon comedy that isn't what I've come to expect from recent PIXAR movies. I liked that "The Wild Robot" was willing to be pretty frank about the perils of the natural world and the life cycle without sugarcoating things too much for a younger audience. "Hoppers" goes a step further than that, mostly just for the sake of getting some surprisingly dark laughs. And it's super effective at keeping the movie entertaining while getting its messages across.
Despite the more zany style of the humor, this still feels like a PIXAR film, mostly due to little things like the thoughtful way that the visual storytelling is executed, and the way that the worldbuilding has a couple of fantastical elements, but not too many. The animals' character designs change depending on whether the POV character in each scene can understand them or not. Mabel's beaver robot form looks like an ordinary beaver from a human POV, but immediately looks like Mabel, with her personality and expressiveness, from an animal POV, or when a human is using Dr. Sam's communication interface with the robots. There are some great jokes that play around with this concept. The editing often sells some of the punchlikes too - look out for those smash cuts.
I also appreciate that "Hoppers" has some nuance when it comes to its eco-fable. It doesn't just argue for the importance of nature, but also points out how the wrong kind of overzealous advocacy can end up doing more harm than good. It would have been very easy to make Mayor Jerry an evil, irredeemable bad guy, but he's not. There are degrees of villainy, and Mabel has to learn not to see the world in black and white. The movie is pitched toward older kids, with some of the intense sequences pushing that PG rating, so parents should plan accordingly.
However, this is the first PIXAR film in a while that I feel comfortable recommending without any reservations. Some of their recent offerings have felt awfully polished and prestigious, but haven't been as entertaining as what's been coming out of its competitors. "Hoppers" seems intent on proving otherwise, and I'm all for it.
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