Disney/Buena Vista
Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) is a lifelong animal lover who has made it her mission to fight for critters big and small, ensuring their natural habitats are not destroyed by callous urban expansion and development.
The biggest fly in her ointment is Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm), who is planning to run a beltway through a glade Mabel holds particularly dear due to the memories she made with her grandmother in this tranquil spot.
As Jerry refuses to back down and claims the glade is abandoned and therefore not worthy of preservation, an increasingly furious Mabel learns that her biology professor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy), and her colleagues have developed the “Hoppers” program, which enables humans to transfer their consciousness into the body of a robot animal.
Not one to pass up an opportunity, Mabel hops into a robot beaver in the hopes of uniting the animals and making them return to the glade and foil Jerry’s plans.
But how will a human fare in the animal kingdom when resembling one of their own without truly being one of them?
Boasting a gleefully absurd premise, Hoppers leans heavily into narrative trends seen in the early days of 3D animated features, where the likes of Pixar’s productions were seen as innovative not only because of their technical achievements, but also due to their narrative creativity, which makes Hoppers a refreshing and welcome bit of silliness that is not afraid to run wild with its weird story.
The humor overwhelmingly lands, with most gags working exceedingly well, albeit it sometimes transgresses into mild horror comedy territory, which may be a bit much for some of the younger audience members, but it is in turn likely to thrill more mature cinema-goers more than most animation features of the 2020s.
Thematically, the themes of environmentalism do not needlessly weigh the film down, allowing the story to progress with sufficient originality and unpredictability to keep audiences invested, all the while avoiding to condescendingly wag its finger at them.
Having increasingly become a shadow of its former self, Pixar productions do not garner the same anticipation as they once did.
Thankfully, Hoppers overwhelmingly goes against the grain of that trend, being a sincere and silly science fiction comedy that invests heavily in humor instead of retreading the exact same story beats that so many animated features tend to do nowadays.
As such, while it still struggles to reach the same heights as some of Pixar’s most celebrated works of yesteryear, Hoppers is nonetheless a fun romp that has something for most ages, and does not become needlessly self-seriousness in the process.
Extras include featurettes, making-of, deleted scenes, and bloopers.
Verdict: 8 out of 10.
