‘Hoppers’ Review: A Rare Pixar Disappointment

How many “Talking ______” movies has Pixar made at this point? Toy Story had talking toys, of course. They followed that with A Bug’s Life and talking insects. They’ve also made movies about talking fish, talking dinosaurs, and talking elements, along with three talking cars movies and two talking emotion movies. (Too bad they haven’t made a movie about a talking partridge in a pear tree yet.)

Pixar didn’t invent this trope, and they have a fair number of films that don’t exploit it. But if they are gonna make another “Talking _____” movie, those talking whatevers better have something new to say. In the case of Hoppers — talking animals, with an Avatar twist — I’m not sure they do beyond a sweet but simplistic message about man and animal (and, to an allegorical extent, man and man) living in harmony despite their differences. In fact, the film will arrive in multiplexes three months after Zootopia 2, another talking animal movie from Disney.

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While Zootopia 2 took place in a fantasy land populated solely by animals, Hoppers is set in something close to our own world, and focuses on a 19-year-old nature lover named Mabel (Piper Curda) who will do anything to protect the small pond she used to visit with her grandmother. The pond was once filled with all sorts of wildlife; over the years, the animals have migrated elsewhere. Their absence gives a reelection-seeking mayor (Jon Hamm) an opportunity to legally (but perhaps not ethically) raze the pond in order to build a highway overpass.

Desperate to find animals to repopulate the area before the Mayor can redevelop it, Mabel stumbles upon a science experiment at the local college. A frazzled, frizzy-haired professor (Kathy Najimy) has developed a technology that can transfer human consciousness into lifelike robots called “hoppers” that look exactly like animals. These artificial creatures can not only observe the natural world, they can interact with it; speaking to bears and lizards and deer and bugs in their native languages — noises that to the human ear, sound like squeaks and growls.

Mabel hops into the (robotic) body of a beaver — whose dam-building skills are essential to saving the endangered habitat — then sets off to find the missing critters. Along the way, she meets King George (Bobby Moynihan) a friendly beaver who lords over a sanctuary for displaced animals built on a series of rules that keep everyone safe (except the members of the food chain that get eaten by other animals because, well, when you gotta eat, you gotta eat).

After decades watching their movies, I think of the animators Pixar as master storytellers. Hoppers director and co-writer Daniel Chong throws a lot of ingredients in the pot here, but I’m not sure they all blend together into a coherent stew. The film has a couple fun gags, an uplifting theme, and a touching subplot about Mabel and her grandmother (Karen Huie). Still, as a story it’s a bit of a jumble, as if someone took a nature doc and hopped it into a mystery movie that was hopped into a broad comedy.

Hoppers starts from a relatively grounded place (at least by the standards of animated family films) and by its frenetic conclusion, it’s gone to wild extremes, some more amusing than others. (Accordingly, the animals are draw more realistically in the early scenes, with small, dark eyes and less extreme features, and then grow more cartoonish after Mabel hops into her beaver bot and learns to communicate with them.)

The heroes of Hoppers’ see nature through an animal’s eyes and it literally expands their worldview. The film’s outlandish twists are meant to encourage moviegoers do the same. More broadly, Hoppers implores audiences of all shapes, sizes, and species to live more kindly and more empathetically, a valuable lesson for everyone in 2026. And, as we’ve come to expect from Pixar, the voice actors are superbly suited to their roles, especially Moynihan as the perpetually sunny lord of the beavers. (Dave Franco also makes a welcome addition as a perpetually cranky butterfly.)

So is that enough? Maybe, but just barely. Every new Pixar movie becomes a referendum on the company, which people talk about as if they are stockholders more than fans. They have invested so much emotional capital in their greatest works that they hold everything they make to an impossibly high standard. When their later efforts fall short, they wag their fingers and declare Pixar a shell of its former self.

The overheated reactions frustrate me — Pixar’s Turning Red, released just four years ago, is as good as anything in the company’s entire history — but it’s hard to argue that Hoppers isn’t among the weaker films in the studio’s library. It’s an original idea rather than a sequel, but it feels awfully familiar. Or, to put it another way, I’d rank it ahead of their talking dinosaur movie and one of the talking cars movies, but not the others, or the talking fish movies, or any of the talking toy movies.

RATING: 6/10