I like to think of myself as an animated film connoisseur.
I used to believe it was some kind of unproclaimed rule for children to watch the full Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks catalog, but as I’ve met peers who haven’t seen Hercules or Ratatouille or even Shrek, I have learned that that is not true in the slightest.
In any case, it’s not like audiences have much incentive to watch animated films anymore. Japanese animation giant Studio Ghibli releases films once every few years, leaving viewers to Disney/Pixar releases. Most tank at the box office (recently, Pixar’s Elio), and no longer provide the same exciting plots as The Incredibles or WALL-E.
Therefore, it is a delight to see Pixar return to form with Daniel Chong’s Hoppers.
At first, Hoppers seems like just another rudimentary animation: Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) is a fiery 19-year-old eco-warrior who is more concerned with the welfare of wildlife than people. Her late grandmother instilled a love for the natural world in her, and now, she wants nothing more than to protect the forest glade where she and her grandmother spent time together.
She often gets into disagreements with the town mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who is determined to destroy the places Mabel holds dear in favor of urban development. He reasons that all the animals have mysteriously disappeared from the areas, so why not build a highway?
In search of a solution, Mabel looks for a beaver to restore the glade to its biodiverse glory, and in doing so, discovers that her college biology professor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has developed an Avatar-esque experiment—an operation called Hoppers, in which a human mind can “hop” into the body of a robot animal and pass itself off as an actual animal in the wild, all while communicating with real animals.
Without thinking, Mabel hijacks one of the robot animals (a beaver) and travels to the resident animal community of Beaverton, soon meeting the genial mammal king, George (Bobby Moynihan), and his subjects. George immediately likes Mabel—he has no idea that she isn’t a real beaver—and they begin to work together to regain their natural habitat from Mayor Jerry.
However, it isn’t long before Mabel’s once concrete plan goes off the rails. I wasn’t expecting the humor to become so high-strung and ludicrous, but I was much happier because of it. There were quite a few lines with a delivery so on point that I began cackling in the theater. It was exciting to feel that again from a Pixar movie—all thanks to We Bare Bears creator Daniel Chong and the co-writer of Luca, Jesse Andrews.
We Bare Bears was a production of Cartoon Network (CN), a TV channel famous for its 2010s shows with slapstick humor (my personal favorite being The Amazing World of Gumball). Now, looking back, it’s clear that CN influenced some scenes in Hoppers—a reinvigoration of craft that Pixar hasn’t seen the likes of since Turning Red.
The storyline and themes are nearly as radical as its unconventional humor: Pixar takes a swing at moral destruction and maybe a little bit of gore, all in line with disastrous character choices. Ultimately, it is a “children’s film,” so a type of happy-ending utopia unravels for the audience. It isn’t necessarily a disappointing ending, but those who resonate with Mabel’s intrinsic fury may be let down.
Although I would characterize Hoppers as a rip-roaring adventure in most cases, I loved how it also took care to show the peace that nature brings. As Mabel’s grandmother says, “It’s hard to be mad when you feel like you’re part of something big.” The Tanakas find serenity and learn to cooperate with others through this lesson, which I thought was a beautiful touch.
Hoppers combines influences from previous Pixar productions to create a gargantuan story of how humans and the environment must learn to coexist. It may get ahead of itself at times, but as the animation style shows—George’s appearance shifts between a lifelike caricature and a dumb animal with the points of view from animals and humans—we are all wildly different. Still, we are all in this together.
