Beaver Tales
It’s alive! pIxar show’s signs of its old life, at least for a few minutes.
Hoppers
Director: Daniel Chong • Writer: Jesse Andrews
Starring [English]: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Karen Huie, Meryl Streep
USA • 1hr 44mins
Opens Hong Kong March 12 • I
Grade: B
Setting aside that Hoppers must have some kind of beaver joke in it that I, as a real life Canadian person, should be able to locate (but can’t… yet), there are moments in the latest from the increasingly average Pixar that recall the formerly stellar Pixar. Take this opening when we meet our heroine, budding environmental activist Mabel Tanaka, as a grade school kid. She’s doing her damnedest to free the school’s communal pets – a turtle, a guinea pig, a lizard and so on – from captivity, and she’s a pain in the ass that only her grandmother (Karen Huie) really gets. They hang out regularly at a little glade outside the town they live in, Beaverton, and commune with nature. Now, not much is going to touch the montage of Ellie and Carl’s shared lifetime at the beginning of Up, but the time Mabel and Granny spend over the opening credits here is pretty affecting.
Hoppers is arguably Pixar’s best film since Domee Shi’s Turning Red got buried on Disney+ around the pandemic. Like that film, this is a standalone (at least for now), and unlike the unfortunate Elio (you could see the original, more interesting film inside trying desperately to bust out of that one) it seems to have been left to sink or swim in isolation. That said, rumours have sprung up that Disney’s notes included requests to tone down the environmentalism, because heaven forbid a movie say “Destroying the ecosystem we all have to exist in so a billionaire can become a multi-billionaire is not a good idea.” Scandalous, I know. But Hoppers says that anyway, even if its redemptive conclusion clangs and, hilariously, Disney released this with a straight face after signing a deal with OpenAI or some shit for generative content that it will burn down habitats (like the glade) and waste more water than some communities could use in a month to create every day. I don’t know if that’s typical psychopathic corporate behaviour or just ginormous cojones.
But it’s so early for Christmas toys
Still, even with Jesse Andrews’s (he wrote the novel adapted into Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in 2015) genuinely enjoyable screenplay and director Daniel Chong (a storyboard artist and Pixar in-house crew since 2022) opting for welcoming, soft, picture book visuals there’s something familiar about Hoppers – aside from the Up vibe and the Avatar joke/premise (hold on). While Pixar isn’t quite cannibalising itself like its parent just yet (though Soul, Coco and Luca ride a dangerously close line), the unrestrained creativity has been reined in in favour of franchising (a third Monsters Inc. was just announced, Toy Story 5 lands in 3…2…). Still, Hoppers blurs the line between IP baiting and genuine storytelling just enough to make you forget stock prices for 100 minutes.
After the efficient prologue we see Mabel (Disney kid Piper Curda) as a 19-year-old university student, close to flunking out of school but still dedicated to environmental activism. Her beloved glade is in danger of being razed to the ground to make way for Beaverton’s mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) to realise his dream highway project and secure re-election. Mabel maintains it’s ecologically disastrous, Jerry says there are no animals there. So of course after Mabel stumbles upon her biology professor Dr Sam’s (Kathy Najimy) cutting-edge “hoppers” – lifelike robotic animals that can hold human consciousness (hence, Avatar) and help them communicate with all the subjects of the animal kingdom – she becomes a beaver and allies with the other beavers and their King George (Bobby Moynihan) to find out why everyone left the glade to begin with. Turns out the animal kingdom is just that, with insects, fish, birds, reptiles and so on, each with a monarch that sits on the ruling Animal Council, which Mabel incites to insurrection (for the record I’m totally Team Animal Council) and Jerry’s overthrow.
Suspicions of Disney aside, Hoppers does have its share of legit funny moments – Mabel and Jerry’s recurring shouting matches are well done, and Andrews doesn’t shy away from a couple of left field moments that kids’ films normally avoid: Let’s just say King George respects the natural cycles of nature and its hierarchy of predators and prey, and a second-act shift on the Animal Council is a hilarious shock that gives Hoppers a flex Pixar hasn’t even tried in years. There’s a bit more frantic Illumination-esque physical comedy and highjinks than Wall-E-style elegant visualisations of the themes, but it actually pays off pretty well in the body-jumping conclusion. The requisite emotional reckonings are all here, brought into relief when Mabel’s duplicity is discovered. And despite any hand-wringing, the environmental message is loud and clear, though probably not one that the kids need to hear. It’s everyone else in the audience that does.
Sam Richardson as one of Dr Sam’s assistants, Connor, Meryl Streep as the imperious Insect Queen and the venerated elder of the Animal Council, Isiah Whitlock Jr (RIP) as a goose and the Bird King and a hilarious, dialled up to 11 Dave Franco as Titus, the entitled Insect heir round out the cast trying to put voice actors out of work. Finally, for the record, do not fuck with the proud and noble beaver. Beavers are assholes. They’ll make you suffer.