'Hoppers' Is Pixar's Best Movie in Nearly a Decade
Hoppers is the best Pixar movie in nearly a decade, at long last proving that the venerable studio still has some juice after a string of disappointments.
Hoppers Is an Eco-Friendly, Horror-Tinged Oddity
Nineteen-year-old aspiring scientist Mabel (Piper Curda) discovers that her PI, Dr. Fairfax (Kathy Najimy, essentially reprising her King of the Hill character) has developed a technique to swap humans into the bodies of beavers. Seeing this as an opportunity to save her beloved home of Beaverton for generations to come, Mabel ports her consciousness into the body of a castor and quickly aligns herself with King George (Bobby Moynihan), a good-natured beaver who rules over the Mammal Kingdom and coaches Mabel on its strict code of ethics. Upsetting the mammals’ harmonious balance is the nefarious Insect King (Dave Franco), who along with human mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) poses the ultimate threat to the beavers’ home.
It's Pixar's Best Movie Since Soul
After the disappointments of Luca (2021), Lightyear (2022), and Elemental (2023), the bright and airy respite of Hoppers appears nearly miraculous. There’s nothing subtle about this eco-friendly message movie, but that’s part of its charm. Director Daniel Chong brings a strong visual eye and a verve to the many chase sequences, and there’s a keen deployment of visual sight gags that rival those in the Naked Gun or Airplane! movies. All of this conspires to make Hoppers the best Pixar movie since Soul; and while this most recent effort isn’t up to the cerebral majesty of Pete Docter’s 2020 masterpiece, Hoppers is still an extremely high watermark for the venerable animation studio which once, but no longer, seemed incapable of releasing duffers.
Hoppers is also very close to being a horror movie, and it’s certainly the weirdest Pixar movie in a long time–perhaps all the way back to WALL-E (2008). There’s a passage near the end of the movie which is properly scary and culminates in an extended homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), which must be a first for Pixar. It’s a delight to see a children’s movie which understands that kids like scary stuff and, rather than being put off by those elements, find in them a way to work through frightening and confusing things in their own lives. What a treat Hoppers is.