It’s rare when an animated kid’s movie leaves parents gasping, mouths agape, and then laughing loudly for a good 15 seconds straight (or was that just me?), but that’s exactly what the Disney-Pixar toon Hoppers does midway through its frenetically fun runtime. Easily one of the studio’s best pictures in years, Hoppers is a funny, fast-paced must-see.
Despite popular opinion, Pixar hasn’t completely lost its way in recent years, but the storied production house has certainly become less of a sure-thing–both critically and financially–than it used to be. Since 2017’s Coco (yes, nearly a decade ago), only two of Pixar’s original titles have proved to be above-average–Soul, which other people loved more than me, and Turning Red, which is downright hilarious, in spite of or because it’s metaphor for a girl’s first periods.
With Hoppers, director and co-writer Daniel Chong take an approach that Pixar has arguably been struggling with for years: entertainment first, message second. Luca, Elemental, and especially the highly disappointing Elio seemed to get swept away by their thematic undercurrents before doing what children’s movies should do: be entertaining as f**k.
Hoppers is entertaining as f**k.
I went in nearly blind, assuming that the movie was about bunnies or something (apparently, I didn’t even look at the movie posters all that closely). What I discovered is that it’s a ridiculous, funny, and downright wild adventure about a young and passionate environmentalist who ports her brain into a beaver robot to convince a real beaver to make a new beaver dam to block a new highway construction project, only to learn that nature has a much more sophisticated society than originally thought. Was that a run-on sentence?
If so, a run-on sentence perfectly encapsulates the experience of Hoppers, which rarely pauses to take a breath as Chong layers on one silly surprise after the next, running headfirst with abandon. It’s fully family friendly, but he gives the script just enough bite to keep things unpredictable–and to downright slap the audience in the face a few times.
Despite its themes about all creatures large and small working together, Hoppers is certainly not as deep or poetic or as emotional as some Pixar works. The movie might get too bonkers at times for some audiences. Chong almost loses grip of the story.
But all that’s okay. Hoppers is a fun, wild time that will delight parents and enthrall children. The three kids I went with, including my own daughter*, absolutely loved it, offering up quotes such as “I give it a 12 out of 10” and “that’s my new favorite movie.”
You can’t get higher praise than that, and so I’ll stop right there.
*To her credit, my daughter did get up from her seat during the climax, walk over to me, and whisper, “They copied this part from The Wild Robot,” but that mimicry didn’t seem to degrade her overall experience.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.