Film reviews: ‘Hoppers’ and ‘Dreams’

‘Hoppers’

Directed by Daniel Chong (PG)

★★★

“Pixar returns to vintage form with Hoppers,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. After last year’s box office clunker Elio, the animation company has rebounded with this “clever, funny, and visually appealing” comedy that “zips along, driven by rambunctious energy.” Disney Channel star Piper Curda voices Mabel, a teen environmentalist
trying to save the woods from demolition by using a “hopper,” an Avatar-like gizmo that lets her consciousness hop into a robotic beaver. From there, the story keeps “barreling forward.”

Hoppers “is at its best when it’s most manic,” said Jesse Hassenger in
The A.V. Club. Mabel befriends many of the animals that fled the glade and eventually inspires them to rise up against Jon Hamm’s Mayor Jerry, who wants to build a highway through the forest. The movie “gets better as it goes, with some truly inspired bits of animal-led mayhem and
body-swapping nonsense.” At one point there’s a car chase that involves a flying shark. This is a “fun, modest little movie with enough zip and
charm to keep kids engaged,” said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com, so I wouldn’t “want to criticize it too much.” Still, it pales in comparison to the masterpieces of Pixar’s early heyday, when the company redefined animation with the likes of Toy Story (1995) and Finding Nemo (2003). “Such are the perils” of modern Pixar: “Even the successes dim a little when viewed in the light of what once was.”

‘Dreams’

Directed by Michel Franco (Not rated)

★★

“In the hands of another, more earthy director, Dreams might have been an enjoyable erotic thriller,” said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York
Times. There are certainly plenty of sex scenes. “But eroticism requires heat,” and minimalist filmmaker Michel Franco has intentionally created a “distant and frosty” tale without “an ounce of warmth.” Jessica Chastain is icy as Jennifer, a wealthy socialite who dallies with and then falls for Fernando, a younger, undocumented Mexican ballet dancer played rather less expertly by Isaac Hernández.

The “morality tale” that follows has “a lot to say about inequality and the prerogatives of privilege.” This romance is “as complicated as it is toxic,” said Justin Chang in NPR.org. Jennifer refuses to make her relationship with Fernando public, and when he dumps her, she becomes a “monstrous manipulator” enacting revenge. While Franco’s points about
hypocritical liberal do-gooders are inarguable, “his methods are obvious,” and I rolled my eyes at the smugness of scenes showing the 1% as oblivious to others’ labor. Franco “loses the plot in the third act,” said Katie Walsh in the Los Angeles Times, when he “jettisons his characters for the sake of unearned plot twists that leave the viewer feeling only icky.” Centering the film on an undocumented immigrant may be timely, but we’re left “in the dark about what we’re supposed to take away from this story of sex, violence, money, and liberty.”