Disney/PIxar Watch: Hoppers (2026)

Watched:  06/09/2026

Format:  Disney+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Daniel Chong

We don't get out to the cinema like we used to, and so it was that I missed Hoppers (2026) in the theater, despite what I'd call pretty good buzz.

It's an odd movie for Pixar, which is reeling from a few years of what I'd call unpredictable box office (which is just the industry these days).  A few movies tanked, and then a few sold like hot cakes.  If I was them, I'd be deeply unsure what to think audiences actually want in a film.

Hoppers is a weird movie.  I don't mean the sci-fi concept, which is cute and fun.  A young, plucky, adorably flawed girl, Mabel (Piper Curda) is doing battle with Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) who wants to build an overpass for his beltway through her beloved woodland glade.  She figures out a wacky scientist (Kathy Najimy) and her team (Sam Richardson and Melissa Villasenor) have built robots and can transfer their consciousness into the animal-shaped bodies.  This is done to observe species up close.  

Mabel, of course, becomes a beaver and enters the animal kingdom and animal hi-jinks ensue. She learns about a royal system of sorts, a grand council of animal types, and she accidentally whips up an animal-kingdom assault on Mayor Jerry and humanity.  Hilarity ensues.

Vaguely applicable moral lessons are learned, and we all have a good time making it to the film's end.  

But it mostly feels like a lot of ideas and scripts were in battle with one another, and we wind up with a lot of funny ideas and concepts worked to the last millimeter, but those are scenes and sometimes just shots loosely stitched together into a plot that sorta hangs together, but also sorta doesn't.  And it left me wondering if leaving the artists to go work out scenes on their own and bring them back for criticism in the sweat box isn't really working the way it's intended.  

Sadly, I think, it's also a sign that Pixar is no longer leading.  The character designs are derivative and uninspired for the humans - the folks who grew up on anime and Ghibli are now making the decisions and don't seem like they want to push the envelope. The animal designs are.. fine?  The only stand out is Loaf, one of the beavers.  This is the first Pixar movie I can recall really leaning into the herky-jerky character animation style I associate with Dreamworks product, relying on striking particular poses and making sounds.  We're a fart short of a Minions moment.

I dunno.  From the studio that brought us Wall-E and transformed animation for twenty-five years, it feels like something has been lost.  

Let me be clear - the movie is *fine*.  It's even *good*.  But if you were expecting Coco or even the gorgeous fantasy of Soul, that felt so story driven and lyrical, you're going to feel like this is more of a general comedy animated film that could have come from any of the studios.  Just, with a "hold my beer" attitude when it comes to upping the stakes in scene after scene.

But, yeah, it's cute and fun and there's worse messages than ecological balance = good.