Hoppers: Movie Review

Cast: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco
Director: Daniel Chong

For those worried Pixar's animation arm has lost its way, Hoppers is the perfect rejoinder to such complaints.

Funny, random and emotionally scary when it wants and needs to be, this tale of all living together and trusting crosses both generations and species. It's the story of Mabel Tanaka (Curda), a young eco-warrior in training who starts the film jail-breaking animals kept in school classroom cages during term time and ends with her sitting atop a rock with a beaver.

When the mayor of Beaverton Jerry (Jon Hamm) decides to build a flyover across Mabel's beloved glade where she grew up with her grandma, she decides to spring into action. Upon learning that all it takes to make the area decreed a nature reserve is a beaver, Mabel sets about to achieve what she believes is a simple goal.

However, she soon finds herself part of the animal kingdom after her consciousness is transported into a robot beaver...

Wildly inventive, deeply heartfelt and above all, completely engaging and joyous, Hoppers is a madcap adventure that is Pixar at its very best. With characters feeling rounded as well as grounded, and the emotional journey a complex and well-executed one, what emerges from it is a story that's genuinely laugh-out-loud funny as well as affecting when it needs to be.

But it's also not afraid to take some swerves into genre territory too, mixing in Fly-like body horror and sci-fi tropes as it all plays out.

The end result is that Hoppers, with its wild array of characters, manages to juggle action sequences and character moments with real aplomb - and never losing sight of any of the basics along the way. From the stand-out creation of the natural world where everything feels aligned to the empathy of loving all creatures, foibles and all, there's just something cohesive here that's utterly charming and exquisitely clever when it needs to be.

However, what's most impressive about Hoppers is the ease with which it manages all of these elements, and leaves you wanting more of the world it's created. It's inevitable there'll be spinoffs here - and quite frankly, they'd be unbelievably welcome.