‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar bounces back with charmingly oddball family animation

Dir: Daniel Chong. US. 2026. 104mins

A 19-year-old environmentalist takes a radical step to save an endangered glade in Hoppers, an entertaining Pixar picture that gets plenty of comic mileage out of its oddball premise. Director Daniel Chong’s big-screen debut follows its young protagonist as she transmits her consciousness into a robot beaver, befriending the local animals to enlist them in her rescue mission. Sometimes the convoluted story forces its emotional beats, but Hoppers is a largely successful animation that introduces a refreshingly darker strain of humour alongside its paeans to the natural world.

Introduces a refreshingly darker strain of humour

Disney releases the film globally from March 4 (it hits US and UK cinemas on March 6), hoping to rebound after Pixar’s last original production, last year’s Elio, was a commercial and critical disappointment. The animation powerhouse still enjoys blockbuster grosses from pictures like Inside Out 2 ($1.7 billion worldwide), but its recent attempts to launch new franchises have misfired, and Hoppers will need good word of mouth and strong reviews to be a sizable theatrical performer.

Teenager Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda) loves animals, steadfastly standing up to the callous, unscrupulous mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has based his reelection campaign on building a new highway that will destroy a once-flourishing glade that used to teem with wildlife. Approaching her biology professor Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy) for advice, Mabel learns that if beavers return to the glade, that will help repopulate the area – so ruining Jerry’s plan. Mabel also discovers that Dr. Sam has created a technology that allows people to transfer their sentience into a lifelike robot beaver, which she utilises to seek out the missing animals who once roamed the glade.

Hoppers’ slightly sci-fi setup hints at some of the delightful strangeness that will occur after Mabel (as the robot beaver) connects with George (Bobby Moynihan), a beaver who is the benevolent king of the local mammals. Mabel, who cannot tell anyone that she’s really a human, hopes to convince the neighbouring bears, beavers and lizards to return to the glade — while, at the same time, trying to understand why they left in the first place. In her robot guise, she is able to communicate with animals, and screenwriter Jesse Andrews gets laughs from imagining the different personality types among the wildlife.

Chong, who created the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears (which also costarred Moynihan), has a firm grasp of Pixar’s reliable mixture of jokes and heart. Hoppers delivers myriad funny moments as it explores Mabel’s growing bond with George, who is far more trusting of humans than she is. (Mabel has good reason for her cynicism; she is mourning her late outdoorsy grandmother, who shared her preference for nature over people.) The script sometimes pushes too hard to elicit its desired emotional reactions, but the voice cast is so charming that one is willing to suspend some disbelief in order to see the endearing characters get their happy ending.

That said, Hoppers is best at its weirdest. Pixar films often feature elaborate chase sequences and the studio’s latest is no different – but Hoppers’ set piece, involving a shark, is among the most creative and bizarre of recent years. And although Mabel’s plot to protect the glade gets overly complicated, the arrival of more and more animal species opens the door to some impressive gallows humour for what is, ostensibly, a family animation.

While Hoppers certainly qualifies as an all-ages affair, the filmmakers are unafraid to take seriously humanity’s dangerous disregard for the natural world — and what animals might do to protect their turf. If the picture’s final stretches suffer from a touchy-feely optimism about humans’ potential to coexist with their environment, the story’s sincerity, paired with some affecting lump-in-the-throat moments, sells the sentiment.

Pixar remains on the cutting edge of mainstream animation, even though its ability to continue wowing viewers has inevitably diminished over time. Still, Hoppers has a few arresting sequences, including one involving a frightening brushfire. But the film focuses most of its energy on Mabel’s personal quest to rescue her beloved glade while, unexpectedly, learning to have more faith in people. Curda gives the character a winning rebellious streak that belies her sorrow over losing her grandmother, and the robot beaver – like all the picture’s animals – is adorable company.