‘Hoppers’ Review: Pixar is Back With Their Best Film in Years [B+]

The symptoms of Pixar’s near-decade-long fallow period are well-known. No new Pixar property has had any cultural stickiness since Coco in 2017. The diagnosis is very much up for debate, but red flags are planted by looking at the filmographies of the directors responsible for the recent projects. Pixar has become obsessed with promoting from within and seemingly demanding complete, unwavering devotion to The Brand. For prospective creatives, the natural inclination not to abandon the most-respected animation studio in America seems prudent. For executives, you promote from within to guarantee that the filmmaker is familiar with the status quo of Pixar’s process and feels more indebted to the company, theoretically making them a bit easier to wrangle, creatively. Once the branches of the Pixar family tree extended beyond the core artists of the early days of CG features (sometimes because filmmakers wanted to tackle new mediums, sometimes because the company figurehead gave increasingly invasive hugs to female employees in the office), the next crop of filmmakers were simply apprentices of the previous generation. It was an infinite feedback loop that diluted the creativity of a once-bulletproof entity. 

Enter Hoppers director Daniel Chong, who first worked with Pixar as a storyboard artist on the abominable Cars 2, released in 2011. Chong would work with Pixar one more time, on Inside Out, before carving his own path as the creator of the Cartoon Network series (and subsequent film) We Bare Bears. The success of that show brought him back into the fold at Pixar, as he became a high-ranking member of the studio’s creative team in 2020. This influence of an artist outside of Pixar’s inner circle may have been exactly what the studio needed, as Chong’s work on Hoppers offers a jolt of creativity the likes of which has not been felt at The House That Woody Built in a good while. Hoppers is full of aesthetic surprises and genuinely thrilling animation flourishes that feel refreshingly off-script in a Pixar movie. Add a couple giant scoops of tear-inducing heart (a Pixar staple that will never go out of style), and Hoppers becomes one of the best Pixar efforts in years. 

Hoppers is not an easy film to summarize in a way that makes sense on paper. “Hopping” is the process of implanting one’s consciousness into a robot that can communicate with any species it desires. For the purposes of this film, that incredible scientific innovation is utilized primarily to study nature in the town of Beavorton, which is in the middle of the construction of a new freeway that is destroying some of the local forests, including one area that is of particular import to Mabel, the film’s protagonist (voiced by relative unknown Piper Curda). Mabel’s late grandmother used to take her to a small but beautiful pond to decompress during her angsty teen years, but the area is now next in line to fall prey to pretty boy mayor Jerry Generazzo’s (played by Jon Hamm, though his unmistakable timbre is altered to the point of near-unrecognizability) urban planning. For some mysterious reason, all wildlife has abandoned the pond, allowing Mayor Jerry to move forward at will. In an effort to save her beloved alcove, she “hops” into a life-like robotic beaver in an attempt to convince other critters to return to the pond.

Mabel arrives at an eclectic neighborhood of sorts, where a number of species commingle with an understanding of a set of “Pond Rules.” It more or less amounts to some version of, “You can’t disrupt the natural order, but always remember we’re all in this together.” Getting intellectually comfortable with a community in which bears and beavers sleep next door to each other is a reach, in theory, but Chong’s refreshing approach makes those concerns evaporate with ease. Pixar has become concerned with abstract bureaucracy as much as anything else. Pete Docter has always been at the forefront of this examination, directing films like Monsters Inc., Inside Out, and Soul, which all attempt to establish a sense of order in fantastical environments. Under Docter’s leadership as Chief Creative Officer, that theme has remained critical to the films of Pixar, but Chong approaches Hoppers with a mirror-universe version of that bureaucracy.

Hoppers is a film of hierarchy and machinations, but it operates with Looney Tunes logic. There are monarchs of various animal phyla and local government rigmarole over the course of the film, but it is all presented with a level of broad archness that leaves room for eye-opening surprises. It almost undercuts the slavish commitment to hierarchical school of thought that has become such a staple. That Looney Tunes logic extends even further, applying to the visuals of the film that make several sequences seem downright expressionistic. Realism is often disregarded for emotional impact, to great effect. If a character feels particularly moody or angry, that emotion is reflected in their physical appearance. Mabel gets mad and her hair jumps up, Mabel’s grandmother tries to explain the nature of calmness in relation to nature and a soft breeze moves across the pond. 

The feeling of the film manifests itself in the world of the film, leaving the possibility for anything to happen. Actions that would be impossible in something adjacent to our reality can be performed because they communicate a greater truth in the context of the film. The animals look different depending on whose point of view we are seeing the movie from. If the animals are the focus, they have the signature big, expressive eyes and act more human. If the animals are seen through the lens of a human not familiar with “Hopping,” the animals have expressionless black dots for eyes. There is always something visually engaging on-screen, disregarding groundedness for aesthetic pleasure. It is an intersection of animation styles that pops the bubble of Pixar’s in-house model. Without spoiling anything, there is a sequence involving a shark that Bugs Bunny would have hooted and hollered over. From its animation theory to its broad comedic sensibility, Hoppers acts as a disruptor to something that needed disrupting.

Hoppers doesn’t pretend to have some sort of grandiose sense of importance, with a message of general human understanding and appreciation for the natural world, but that sentiment bears fruit when the characters are drawn so precisely. That rings no more true than when you consider King George, the kindly beaver who reigns over the film’s animal commune. Whether he has his beady “real world” eyes with no ability to verbally communicate or his adorable, cartoonishly verbose “Hopper” identity, he maintains a true sense of pathos. Upending the familiar methods of theatrical animation gets to a grander central truth. Hoppers lacks the simplicity or hook that Pixar had perfected for so many years, but thrives on detail. Micro-moments bring Hoppers to life. Images express what could have been expressed more tritely with words. It is interested in testing the bounds of animation, imagining the idea of feeling rather than the look of how one looks in real life when they feel.

Hoppers transcends its lack of plot simplicity and specific world rules by latching on to a classically absurd form of storytelling. There is no emotion for emotion’s sake. Nothing comes cheap. And it often comes via image-making rather than dialogue. Never before has a beaver sitting on a rock felt more rousing. It isn’t as formally revolutionary as something like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but it certainly feels like it is breaking some sort of unwritten rule. Daniel Chong loves love and he loves laughs; both of those feelings are omnipresent in Hoppers. Once you are able to wrap your head around the relatively convoluted plot, you won’t stop wrapping your arms around everything else about the movie. It feels different than the mediocrity that Pixar has been peddling this decade, in all the right ways. Pixar is dead, long live Pixar. 

Grade: B+

Walt Disney/Pixar will release Hoppers only in theaters on March 6.

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Jay Ledbetter

Jay Ledbetter is a finance manager by day, film critic by night living in Atlanta, Georgia. He began writing about film in 2013 and is not afraid to confront people of all ages if they are too loud in the theater.

In addition to his work at Awards Watch, Jay has written and hosted podcasts for Film Inquiry and InSession Film. He is an auteur obsessive, regularly diving deep into the filmographies of celebrated filmmakers.

Jay is a proud member of the Atlanta Film Critics Circle and the Georgia Film Critics Association. You can follow him on Twitter @MrJayLedbetter.

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