Running Time: 104 minutes
This feature from Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios opens exclusively in theaters on March 6th.
For the past decade or so, Pixar Animation Studios have taken heat from critics and the public for focusing too much attention on sequels. But to be fair, they have been producing plenty of impressive original works, including Coco, Soul and Luca. This week, we have another fresh property arriving from the production house. Hoppers is a new animated tale and it’s exciting to see a film without a number after its title. Still, while attempting something different offers some pluses, venturing down alternate routes doesn’t always result in a complete success.
Set in a town called Beaverton, the film follows Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda), a young girl with a temper. She ends up forming a strong bond with her grandmother, a forest guide. Years later, the college-age Mabel is determined to protect her late grandmother’s favorite glade and prevent it from being developed. Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) claims the animal population has left as he nears completion of a freeway overpass on that very spot. While Mabel’s last protest fails to stop the project, she does accidentally discover her biology professor’s top-secret project. The instructor and her team 3D-print robotic animal bodies, temporarily transplant their brains into them, and venture out to presumably study animal life. Mabel decides to borrow the technology, find some animals, and convince them to return to the glade to help end the project. She implants herself into a beaver, meeting leader King George (Bobby Moynihan) and all sorts of wildlife, urging them all to fight for their territory.
As with all Pixar titles, the animation is spectacular. There are phenomenal shots of beavers swimming underwater and building a dam, and when the story and action become more exaggerated, the creative visuals occasionally amaze. This includes a chase sequence involving a flock of birds lifting a large shark out of the ocean. Additionally, the climax, involving a forest fire and a robotic avatar whose parts melt off, has a striking appearance (but parents should note that it’s surprisingly unsettling and may give younger audience members nightmares).
Some of the jokes land as well. A scene featured prominently in advertising for the movie, involving the beaver version of Mabel trying to relay a message to the mayor via texting, earns a chuckle. It also leads to the previously mentioned chase involving a couple of unusual wildlife species. Additionally, a few moments involving the lead beaver taking on anthropomorphic traits to complete tasks earn a laugh.
Yet, not everything on display works. There are several odd elements and contradictions that don’t flow well together. So much so that there is even a joke about some of the characters behaving in an incongruous manner. While the statement can certainly apply when a human is trying to integrate with animals, the story leaves the audience questioning a lot of what is occurring onscreen.
Mable is a college student (who would assume is nearing her twenties) with a passion for the natural world, but her knowledge and behavior frequently mirror that of someone half her age. The characters raise concern about the amount of time a brain can spend in the body of an avatar, but nothing is done with the idea. A lot of the humor revolves around the sudden deaths of critters, who are eaten, or, in the case of insects, unexpectedly swatted. These moments are played for laughs, but rarely land.
The shift midway through the story results in more issues. When Mabel warns wildlife of the freeway, the majority of creatures decide that the answer to the problem is, in fact, to eliminate all of humanity. Yes, a few gags involving tiny beings plotting against larger, more dominant homo sapiens raise a smile. However, the tone falters as the story shifts between cute interactions involving furry creatures, along with dark, scary moments featuring the potentially grim fate of a group of people (not to mention the ends of several members of various Animal Kingdom species) that are quickly tied up with a plea for tolerance and harmony between humankind and nature.
The many strange shifts and tangents blur the overall message of the film, and as a result the pieces don’t feel unified or clear by the close. In fact, one begins to feel like the story went through a few too many focus groups and rewrites, ultimately losing whatever individual voice it might have originally possessed. Hoppers looks fantastic, but feels like it is trying to please everyone in the theater, and in the a little more muddled than hoped for.
