Hoppers

How can you be both early and late?

Hoppers officially comes out in less than a week, but I went to its “Early Access Screening” today. It was scheduled for 1 pm, but the projector didn’t start up for another twenty-minutes. After that, it hopped on over to Pixar’s latest - sans trailers. Let's hop to it.

Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) has always been passionate about animals. As a kid, she and her grandma (Karen Huie) spent time together in the glades outside of Beaverton. As a college freshman, she campaigns against Mayor Jerry Generazzo’s (Jon Hamm) campaign to replace the glades with a freeway. But nobody seems interested in helping her take a stand. One night, Mabel discovers her biology professor, Dr. Fairfax’s (Kathy Najimy), Hopper project, which lets humans transmit themselves into robot animals. She decides to take Fairfax's robot beaver for a spin, and winds up in the glades.

Mabel soon integrates into the Superlodge, a community of displaced animals led by actual beaver King George (Bobby Moynihan). A few notable highlights include Loaf (Eduardo Franco), another beaver; Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor), a bear; and Tom (Tom Law), a lizard. She helps them move back to the glades, which drives Jerry to pushback harder. She rallies the animal troops, who are all willing to go to war. It’s up to Mabel and her friends - human and animal - to save the day before both sides possibly destroy themselves. That’s basically it.

Daniel Chong, the creator of Cartoon Network’s We Bare Bears, makes his feature debut here. He and screenwriter Jesse Andrews create a pretty wacky sci-fi story that’s somewhere between Avatar and The Wild Robot. This film and the latter operate on a similar comic wavelength as Mabel integrates herself into the Superlodge and learns their “pond rules.” One of their most important is “when you gotta eat, eat,” which Mabel inadvertently breaks by saving Loaf from Ellen. It’s not too morbid, until a jaw-dropping moment at the midpoint conference of animal monarchs. You'll have to see that, and how they bring in a dreaded "apex predator" for yourself, among other things. Chances are, you'll have plenty to laugh at.

You’ll also have a lot to like about Mabel. Her passionate activism is evident in the prologue, when she tries to liberate her school’s pets. Her attempts to get signatures for a petition leads her to help around an old man’s house (wait for the punchline). She’s so giddy when she hops that it leads to a fun chase scene. She has a moving relationship with her grandma, even if it’s mostly a posthumous one. She has a particularly nice relationship with King George, in both its ups and downs. You've also got to respect her moral standards as she, despite her animosity with Mayor Jerry or the eventual final villain, doesn't want either of them "squished." But she won't give up without a fight, either. 

Who else do we have? Mayor Jerry maybe a big blowhard, but even he has a sense of morality. Dr. Fairfax and her colleagues, Nisha (Aparna Nancherla) and Conner (Sam Richardson), are pretty cool, too. Dr. Fairfax, in particular, gets some great laughs as she explains the history of her program. The Superlodge residents are all a lovable bunch, even if we barely get to know most of them. The aforementioned few we know the most are easily the best of the bunch. The animal monarchs, particularly the Insect Queen (Meryl Streep), the Bird King (the recently deceased Isiah Whitlock Jr), and the Amphibian King (Steve Purcell) - are all entertaining. The final villain - all I can say is that he's voiced by Dave Franco - is equally disturbing and goofy.

What about the technicals? For starters, both the actual and robotic animal characters are as cuddly as their personalities. Their eyes shift from animal to human, depending on the perspective, which makes for a great visual trick. It especially pays off when we're introduced to the apex predator. It turns out that Jerry's been driving off the animals with high-pitched speakers on fake trees. We don't get to experience as much of that painful noise as possible, but there's still a decent sound design here. Every bit of the final battle, which escalates to a forest fire, is both visually and emotionally outstanding. It's all accentuated by a neat score by Mark Mothersbaugh.

Any nitpicks? Early on, we see Mabel’s mom drop her off at her grandma’s, and that’s all we hear of her outside of a flashback. You might expect she’d be more prevalent, but nope. Mabel accuses Jerry of breaking the law, likely due to the fake trees, but he never serves any time. Perhaps him helping out at the end was his rehabilitation. Whatever the case, these nitpicks do nothing to hinder how much I enjoyed this movie.

Pencil Hoppers into next year's Oscar ballot. Unless Toy Story 5 is really that good, then we already have Pixar's best chance to win next year's Animated Feature Award. You need to check it out this coming month to see its abundant surprises for yourself. That's it for February.