Hoppers (U)
Cast: Meryl Streep, Piper Curda, Jon Hamm, Bobby Moynihan, Dave FrancoGenre: SciFi
Author(s): Jesse Andrews, Daniel Chong
Director: Daniel Chong
Release Date: 06/03/2026
Running Time: 104mins
Country: US
Year: 2026
Pint-sized eco-activist Mabel is passionate about protecting the glade where she spent many blissful afternoons with her late grandmother. Unfortunately, animals have abandoned the site, allowing Mayor Jerry to confirm plans to construct a highway through the lush retreat... unless Mabel can lure a live beaver back to the glade and bring other wildlife with it. In desperation, the plucky teenager mind-melds with a robotic beaver and sets off on an outlandish odyssey into the great outdoors.
LondonNet Film Review
Hoppers (U) Film Review from LondonNet
Trust is like a dam. When it springs an occasional leak, you patch it up and carry on. So says a benevolent beaver in Hoppers, the latest wildly imaginative computer-animated comedy from the heartstring-pluckers at Pixar. Screenwriter Jesse Andrews conceals a tub-thumping lesson about protecting natural habitats inside a hilarious coming-of-age story glimpsed through the eyes of a 19-year-old eco-activist on a mission to honour the memory of an elderly relative…
The teenage trailblazer is Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda), who nurtured a passion for wildlife from her grandmother (Karen Huie). The pair spent blissful afternoons admiring Mother Nature atop a large stone that overlooks a glade near the old woman’s home in Beaverton. After grandma dies, animals abandon the glade and self-serving Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) confirms plans for his vanity project – the Beaverton Beltway – which will pass through the formerly teeming preserve. “You can’t save that place. Only a beaver can,” biology professor Dr Samantha Fairfax (Kathy Najimy) explains to Mabel, confirming that when a new beaver settles in the glade, other animals will follow and their presence legally prevents Jerry from sending in the bulldozers.
Mabel subsequently learns that Dr Sam, colleague Nisha (Aparna Nancherla) and grad student Conner (Sam Richardson) have secretly developed Hopping technology, which allows humans to port their minds inside life-like robotic critters. Mabel hijacks the system to meld with a mechanised beaver and the teenager embarks on an outlandish odyssey to save the glade by rallying other creatures to her cause, including beaver monarch King George (Bobby Moynihan) and the all-power Animal Council commanded by the Insect Queen (Meryl Streep), whose caterpillar son (Dave Franco) is one pupation shy of megalomania.
Hoppers is another polished gem from the Oscar-winning studio responsible for WALL-E and Inside Out, which engineers high-tech hijinks from a madcap plot that borrows from James Cameron’s blockbusting forays on Pandora. “Woah, you guys. This is like Avatar!” gushes Mabel on cue. Andrews’ script playfully acknowledges its dramatic inspirations, using the bond between Mabel and her grandmother as a touchstone for deeper and timely deliberations about our fraught relationship with a natural world that sustains human life on this resource-plundered planet.
Stylised visuals ramp up cuteness over photorealism but remain impeccably detailed down to the way animal fur interacts with flowing water. Zany set pieces are breathlessly staged, especially the centrepiece of the Animal Council’s most deadly enforcer, shark assassin Diane (Vanessa Bayer), carrying out a contract to “squish” Jerry. I laughed uproariously at visual and verbal gags and drifted into dewy-eyed delirium before director Daniel Chong’s picture delivered the repeated emotional gut punches that have become Pixar’s trademark. Screenwriter Andrews philosophises that it’s hard to be mad when you feel like you’re part of something. I’m mad, in the best way, for Hoppers.
– Sarah Lee
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UK and Irish Cinemas Showing Hoppers
From: Friday 22nd May
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