Rating 5/10
Pixar’s Hoppers is one of the strangest movies the studio has ever produced. It’s loud, chaotic, and constantly shifting gears between an environmental sermon and cartoon lunacy. It throws so many ideas at the viewer that it never decides on what kind of story it wants to tell.
Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) grows up in the city of Beaverton but spends much of childhood in a nearby glade with a beloved grandmother (Karen Huie). Mabel has anger-management issues, but she gradually learns patience and respect for the natural world through those visits. The natural sanctuary becomes a place of calm and connection. Years later, after her grandmother’s death, Beaverton’s mayor, Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm), announces plans to replace the woodland clearing with a freeway, arguing that the animals have already abandoned the area. Now a 19-year-old college student, Mabel throws herself into activism to save the forest, but her protests fail to gain any real traction.
She discovers that her biology professor, Dr. Sam Fairfax (Kathy Najimy), is secretly developing an experimental technology called the “Hoppers” program, which allows a human consciousness to enter a robotic animal to study wildlife up close. Mabel decides to use the device to inhabit a robotic beaver and ventures into the woodland refuge, hoping to understand why the animals left and persuade them to return.
Hoppers is disjointed in a way that feels very unlike Pixar. It’s zany and haphazard, closer to something DreamWorks or Illumination might produce. I don’t mean that as a slight; I enjoyed Over the Hedge and Minions, but those movies maintain a consistent tone. The vibe here is a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of narrative. Its central premise borrows from Avatar by possessing a shell to infiltrate another society, but it also suggests The Lorax in its eco-parable ambitions, adopts a spy-movie structure reminiscent of Mission: Impossible, and echoes The Wild Robot in its portrayal of technology entering the natural world.
That random sampling of concepts might be fine if they came together into something sweet or coherent. Instead, the production is a jumble. The motivations of the characters are capricious and lack any clear logic. The tone swings wildly from an earnest sermon about protecting nature one minute to a flippant farce the next.
Mabel is not a pleasant protagonist. At one point, she even kills an important character by accident. The movie treats this as a throwaway gag. Jerry Generazzo is introduced as a greedy politician obsessed with building a highway instead of protecting nature. Later, the account tries to reposition him as a sympathetic guy. Meanwhile, the animal kingdom is organized as a council of monarchs representing the insect, amphibian, fish, reptile, and bird classes. King George (Bobby Moynihan), a beaver monarch, becomes Mabel’s ally. He’s nice, but the other kings and queens behave in ways that are not admirable. At one point, the animals decide that the best solution is to assassinate the city leader. That raises the question: if these animals are so nasty, why are we supposed to root for them?
The biggest issue is tone. You can’t preach with sincerity about environmentalism, then simultaneously trash that notion with silly gags. The message doesn’t land. Seagulls attempting to kill the local official by dropping a shark onto his car is one of many plot twists. The story barrels toward a climax involving the real mayor, a robotic duplicate mayor, and an evil insect king (Dave Franco) inhabiting the machine. It’s so bizarre that it’s almost impossible to describe. Don’t forget to take its conservationist message seriously!
I was more exasperated than entertained by the arbitrary developments. I’ll concede the forest glade is lush and colorful. The visuals are undeniably pretty. I realize that pretty much describes all animated films these days, but I just wanted to end on a positive note.
03-05-26