Nice Beaver! – Hoppers

I will fully admit, I did not have high hopes for Pixar’s latest feature, Hoppers. It was coming out in early March, which is a very iffy statement for the studio’s confidence in the quality. The trailers were not encouraging, at times making the film seem like an updated version of the unwatchable G-Force, and others giving off the impression that the whole affair would just be a grating kiddie flick meant to sell toys, basically a nature-based Cars. Given that most of the studio’s marketing heft is behind the upcoming Toy Story 5, and the fact that they left the delightful Elio to bomb with no help, I got the sneaking suspicion that Hoppers would be, at best, a serviceable nothing burger whose failure would be used to justify leaning even harder into Pixar becoming a sequel factory alongside Disney proper. I mean, the title itself felt like a tone deaf backdoor reference to Kevin Spacey in A Bug’s Life, which, why would you ever invoke his name again, even indirectly?

So understand that what I’m about to say, I do not say lightly. This is PANTHEON level! Yeah, I wouldn’t have believed it possible based on the leadup. Nothing that we were shown in previews gave any impression that we’d have something of value on our hands here. Hell, I haven’t done TFINYW in a few months, but had I done one for March, I guarantee you I would have included this one, maybe even considered it for “Worst Trailer in the World” status. But somehow, some way, this is the best the studio’s put out since Inside Out 10 years ago. I’m not kidding.

There are basically five facets that make this an instant all-timer for Pixar. The first, and most important, is its lead, Mabel Tanaka, voiced by Piper Curda, who cut her teeth on several Disney shows. When we first meet her, she’s a rebellious grade schooler attempting to smuggle all the classroom pets out of the building to set them free, presumably something she’s tried several times, given the faculty’s response. She learns to calm down and let go of her anger through her grandmother (Karen Huie), who takes her to a remote glade in the nearby forest, where she can zen out to the sights and sounds of nature.

As a 19-year-old environmental activist and college student, Mabel maintains her hotheaded contrarian streak (she literally skateboards to the glade with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” playing in the background – if there’s one instant way to make me swoon…) and directs it towards stopping the construction of a beltway around the city of Beaverton, a project spearheaded by Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm), a popular but supremely egotistical politician. When the glade is threatened, Mabel does everything in her power to stand up for it, but Jerry tells her that he’s allowed to build his highway because all the animals have left the area, much to Mabel’s confusion and consternation.

Mabel is an incredible Pixar heroine. She’s smart, passionate, and driven, but not in an overly obnoxious way like Mei Mei in Turning Red. She also fights for something that matters, instead of risking all of civilization to gawk at a boy band. With just a few lines of dialogue, quick and well-timed comedic movements, and some choice facial expressions, you understand what she’s all about, and even if you don’t exactly condone her actions, you understand why she’s making them, and can appreciate her worldview. She’s immediately relatable to just about everyone in the audience, because she’s fighting for a greater good, even if her methods are a bit slapdash and not all that well thought out to start. Within moments of her introduction, she becomes a character that you want to see go on a journey. She’s flawed, but has her heart in the right place, which means every single person in the auditorium can find something to like about her as a person, as well as a curiosity to satisfy.

This leads into the second superlative. This movie COMMITS! With 48 hours to stop her beloved glade from being paved over, Mabel tries to lure a beaver back to the dried up pond to dam the nearby stream, thus making the habitat, well, a habitat again. When she spots one, it doesn’t take the bait, instead leaving for the road, where it’s picked up by a van. Mabel follows it back to her college and discovers that it’s a robot, and that her professor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) has created a machine that can let people “hop” their consciousness into the body of a robotic animal to observe nature at a closer level, even communicate with local wildlife. Without a moment’s hesitation, Mabel jacks herself into the machine, enters the robot beaver body, and rushes back to the glade in hopes of convincing the fauna to return to foil Jerry.

All of this is zany to the max, but it also demonstrates how much the film is willing to go all the way with its ideas, even some that are a lot darker than Disney or Pixar normally puts out. Mabel is of course overjoyed to be able to talk with animals, and her enthusiasm leads to several moments of slapstick. But we’re also shown that there are consequences to her actions. The first real beaver she finds in this form, named Loaf (Eduardo Franco from Stranger Things), is lazy and unmotivated. As Mabel tries to convince him, a bear lunges out from the trees to eat Loaf, who is instantly resigned to his fate. Mabel saves him, but it turns out she’s committed a horrible sin, breaking “Pond Rules.” Loaf and his erstwhile killer, named Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor), take her to see George, the king of the mammals, complete with tiny crown. He’s voiced by Bobby Moynihan (he and Villaseñor are but two of several Saturday Night Live cast members and alums in this vocal ensemble), and he informs Mabel of the laws of the land, including the understanding that everyone has to eat, an overt acknowledgement of the food chain, and that animals do sometimes have to die to sustain others.

That’s an amazing degree of nuance. So often when we see environmentalists depicted in films, it’s a one-note characterization where they scoff at the idea of eating meat and look down on anyone who does. This one just flat out states the fact that animals eat other animals, and that it’s an acceptable part of life. Where there’s room for argument and differentiation is that George and all the other animal rulers (there are kings and queens for birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and insects) believe that humans are part of the mammal world and understand the system they’ve all agreed to, when in fact humans can’t even interpret animal noises as speech. This is where you can still talk about the fact that there are people who exploit and damage the environment without casting too wide a net and lumping in everyday folks who eat a burger with the monsters who willfully destroy the planet for profit.

The glee to which the film goes all in on this stuff also allows the comedy to rise to the highest levels in Pixar’s history, the third major highlight. Dr. Sam and her associates are stunned by the revelation that the animals can talk to each other and have their own society, because the prospect is objectively absurd. The flick takes all these concepts to their extremes for the highest of jinks, and has a ton of fun with it in the process, making for an uproariously funny experience. Mabel and Jerry argue like little kids. Animals will give speeches and then be casually eaten. People notice the tiny crowns and have no idea how to react. Interactions with the film’s late-story villain (Dave Franco) include dialogue that had me and so many others bursting with laughter in our seats. Some of the jokes are decidedly dark and morbid, but they completely work within context, and the animation pushes the envelope to wring this gallows humor for all its worth. We see what happens when Mabel gets what she wants, for good and bad. We see how the corrupt still have a sense of decency. And we see what happens when a flock of birds summon an apex predator to put down a perceived threat. It’s all insane, but it all makes a weird sort of sense. There’s so much going on that I’m sitting here glossing over the fact that they actually got Meryl Streep to voice one of these characters, and it’s for one of the best gags not just in the movie, but the entire Pixar canon!

This is how the picture earns its emotional resonance. In a lot of Pixar films, especially the more recent ones, you can see where they’re setting up the “Pixar Tears” moment, but here, it actually takes you by surprise, not just because it’s not obviously telegraphed, but because the story has earned the sentimentality. We’ve all had at least one time in our lives when we felt we were all alone, and not in an angsty “nobody understands me” way. I mean that moment where it feels like we’re screaming into the void, like we’re calling out to the world for a helping hand, for someone, anyone, to understand our pain and to offer a solution rather than just platitudes. We know what it’s like to feel like we don’t matter. That’s the sad and genuine core of Mabel’s crusade, and when she’s finally able to express it, we experience it with her all the more because we’ve taken this trip as her omniscient companions. We’re not just watching a young whippersnapper who thinks she knows everything and the movie makes her right because they don’t have a protagonist otherwise (looking at you, Wish). No, we’re accompanying Mabel on her mad quest, doing our best to keep up with her energy and feeling every setback with her, because for every adult in that theatre, we’ve been there, and for every kid, we know they’re going to be. There are times when Pixar almost seems like it can hack the human heart with ease, and in Hoppers we definitely get one of the high marks of that trope.

Fourth on the list is the animation itself. Helmed by Daniel Chong, the creator of We Bare Bears, the art style is a crisper, more cleaned-up version of what we’ve seen Pixar do in the past, with a strong balance of silly and serious. The studio has gotten so much better at designing human characters over the last 30 years, but you can tell that they’re still having fun in creating character models that are just slightly off for comedic effect. This is best exemplified by Dr. Sam, her associates Nisha and Conner (Aparna Nancherla and Sam Richardson, respectively), as well as Mayor Jerry, the latter of whom always stands out because he looks prim and dignified, but has wildly over-the-top physicality that belies a more manic side he attempts to keep hidden. Seeing him and Mabel go at it is easily one of the most enjoyable things about this film, and honestly, the closest thing I have to a complaint is that we don’t get enough of Mabel as a human compared to her beaver form, because her design is so cool and full of comic possibilities.

Speaking of her beaver form, that’s the other key strength from the animation. When Mabel is a beaver and interacting with other animals, they’re designed like cartoon characters. They’ve got big, expressive eyes, off-center teeth, and puffy, moveable fur that almost seems to explode from Mabel’s body whenever she’s enraged. Ironically for a Pixar feature, she and the others look like the next evolution of Looney Tunes characters at certain points. However, whenever Mabel’s a human, or whenever we’re operating from a human’s perspective, the animals just look like normal forest creatures, though enhanced with a slightly bulbous, adorable aesthetic. This distinction is teased early on, as Mabel’s first observation of the robot looks like a regular beaver with small, beady eyes, and when she jumps in, you do notice the change in the shape of the peepers. But as the film goes on, the differences become almost night and day. It’s incredibly clever without being too in-your-face about it. It’s an enhancement, not the defining operative statement of the movie.

That takes us to the final way this picture shines, the maturity of the writing. This is a film that deals with some important and heavy issues, particularly as it relates to mental health and ecological concerns, but it refuses to paint anyone into a corner. One of the “Pond Rules,” as King George states, is that, “We’re all in this together,” and that’s an ethos that pervades the entire runtime. No one can shoulder all the burdens themselves. We need help, guidance, and understanding. We have to operate from the assumption that everyone has goodness in them, even when they do the wrong thing, unless they choose to prove otherwise. People can vehemently disagree with one another and still recognize basic humanity and respect a different perspective. That’s a much-needed moral, especially in the current political climate, because it gives people the opening to do what’s right, but can still advocate for punishment if someone won’t accept responsibility for the harm they’ve done. It’s a fantastic lesson for the youngest viewers.

Even the references play smarter than they would in a regular family film. There are jokes, asides, and visual callbacks to the likes of The Lion King, Charlotte’s Web, Jaws, The Birds, and pretty much every other major movie you can think of with a primarily animal cast. There are also strong parallels between this story and The Wild Robot in some of the character interactions and plot beats, but there’s a decidedly more human angle and we don’t go fully off the rails in the third act. Hell, the first 10 minutes recall the themes of the opening to Up, though without the complete emotional devastation. Rather, the losses here are treated as natural, something to grieve but respect, and even admire, because of the impact it had on Mabel’s life. The film is reminding the audience of something they may or may not be aware of as a means to contextualize a scene, but they’re not copying it, nor are they bringing it up just for the sake of bringing it up. It’s not nostalgia baiting, but rather an acknowledgement of shared experience.

There are a few things you can nitpick, but they don’t impact the overall quality of the film. Yes, you can ask why the beavers build a dam while listening to “Working for the Weekend” even though they can’t understand human speech. Yes, you can ask how tiny Mabel was able to carry so many animals in her backpack, including a snake and a guinea pig, why the snake didn’t eat said guinea pig, and why the classroom only had one when they’re supposed to be kept in pairs.

But none of that matters. The reason Hoppers has gone immediately to the highest ranks of the Pixar canon is because it’s a film that fully believes in itself, and all the madness and earnestness it entails. It doesn’t hold back on showing the consequences of someone’s actions, be they positive, negative, tragic, or comic. It pushes family films out of their comfort zone by showing the lengths someone will go to just to get a tiny sliver of peace of mind in an increasingly hectic world. Most importantly, this is a film that doesn’t hold your hand. Instead it sits with you, just like Mabel and her grandmother on their favorite big rock by the glade. It invites you in, stays with you, helps you along if you ask for it, but mostly just beams with pride as you take in the wonder of life all around you. For a film that goes harder for the laughs than anything the studio has ever done, it’s also dedicated to making sure we all get the joke, so we can all have a well-earned break from the world together.

Grade: A

Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? What are the greatest Pixar movies that you’ve seen? Would you be just as quick as Mabel to jump into the body of an animal and live in the woods? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!