Hoppers

Every animal gets their own animated movie eventually. We’ve had family-friendly fodder about baby deer (Bambi), elephants (Dumbo), penguins (Happy Feet), lions (The Lion King), even ants (Antz). But it’s a wonder why the humble beaver has never had a turn until now, a wrong finally righted with Pixar’s Hoppers. With their prominent teeth, waddly feet and floppy tails, beavers are inherently entertaining creatures to watch, and the studio’s 30th feature film doesn’t waste the opportunity.

Hoppers begins, however, with humans. Our hero here is Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Lila Liu in the opening and Piper Curda as a teenager): an Asian-American girl with anime hair and a fire in her belly. We first meet her at elementary school, desperately trying to liberate the animals imprisoned in her classroom (spot the turtle named Crush, Finding Nemo fans). Her rebellious spirit constantly gets her into trouble, but she finds a kind of peace and serenity with her grandma (Karen Huie), who teaches her to quietly witness the beauty of nature at a glade near her house.

The opening few minutes of Hoppers nudges towards the prologue of Pixar’s Up in establishing the emotional stakes. Mabel is desperate, at all costs, to do right by her grandma, and by the time she is a 19-year-old college student, she has taken on a punky riot grrrl persona, forever battling with slick, Gavin Newsom-esque Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm, having fun) who wants to build a giant concrete freeway right through her beloved glade.

In desperation, Mabel accidentally stumbles upon a high-concept bit of technology: the university she attends has created hyper-realistic animal robots that can be piloted by humans. Yes, it’s basically Beaver Avatar (Beavatar?) — a similarity that the film wittily addresses.

Once Mabel adopts a beaver body, and enters the animal realm, director Daniel Chong really lets loose. Nature is beautiful and serene, yes, yet Hoppers also understands that nature is alien, deadly, and to a human mind, completely bonkers. So, there are “pond rules”, animals wearing adorable tiny crowns, whispers of “the twig wars”, at least two major character deaths that are played almost entirely for laughs, and other madcap worldbuilding besides.

But Hoppers manages to thread the delicate needle of being delightfully silly, sweetly emotional and also About Something — in a way Pixar hasn’t always managed of late. It is the studio’s funniest film in years, it holds onto the emotional character stakes, even when Meryl Streep shows up to voice a butterfly, and it stays true to an important lesson about respecting the equilibrium of living things — of unity versus division. This is not quite top-tier Pixar — that remains a challenging league to enter — but it shows a confidence from the studio that has often felt absent of late.