“Hoppers”
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rated: PG
Released: March 6, 2026
Running Time: 1 hrs 44 minutes
Rating: 10/10

From humans to animals, everyone can agree, “Hoppers” is a massive hit.

“Hoppers” is an extremely unique movie with themes of environmentalism, trust and compromise. The movie follows a young 20 year old eco-warrior of Beavertown as she fights for her childhood safe place.

Very early on Mabel, the main character voiced by Piper Curda, is shown fighting for animal rights as she tries to break all of the class pets out of school in her elementary days by shoving them in her backpack.

Once she is thwarted, she is promptly dropped off at her grandmother’s house after biting a teacher. Mabel, still angry about being caught, goes to pout in a tree when her grandmother suggests showing the young child something special.

The grandmother then shows her to the glade, where she explains to Mabel that it is hard to be mad when you realize you are a part of something bigger than yourself. This becomes Mabel’s safe space over the years, with the movie showing how Mabel interacts with the animals and environment alongside her grandmother.

It is then revealed that the mayor, long after the first moments where Mabel is brought to the glade in elementary school, now wants to build a highway right through the glade. The movie watchers then get taken through the journey of Mabel fighting for the glade by using technology from her college to turn into a beaver and convince the animals to fight back against the construction. What follows is a chaotic masterpiece, with jokes that aren’t just meant for young audiences and a horrifying twist that theatergoers did not expect.

Overall, the animation is astounding, with beautiful environmental scenes and dynamic characters. It really draws people in. The characters are also drawn very differently from Pixar’s normal style. While it still has the same basic qualities, they
really made each of the characters in this film stand out. A large critique of the Pixar style from film critics is that their main characters are generic from the last five years. Nothing sets them apart. However, Mabel completely stands out from this with her large, puffy hair and distinct face, like her large eyebrows, freckles and gap in her teeth. It allows this film to stand out from the character designs in general.

They also had very imaginative ways of portraying the animals. When humans couldn’t understand them, the animals would have less animated expressions, with their pupils being much larger, which made them look closer to actual animals.

However, whenever someone put on the animal translation earbud or they were in the robot, they would change the style to be more like a Disney animal, with human eyesand more exaggerated expressions. It was a great artistic decision and allowed people
who were watching the film to have an easy understanding of when characters were understood or not.

The jokes also had a unique feel to them, and while not all of them were hits, several had audiences laugh out loud in its mundanity. There were several scenes that lingered after most movies would have cut them so that a side character could make
a comment, like when King George, the king of the mammals and voiced by Bobby Moynihan, asked for someone to call the counsel and after a brief pause, an animal out of view said that he would do it. It may seem normal in a conversation, but that’s what makes it so funny in a movie where these bits of dialogue are often cut out. Hoppers does this several times throughout the film and has never failed to catch a laugh.

It was also great to see that each character had subtle flaws while still ultimately being good people, except for the main villain towards the end. While Mayor Jerry, voiced by Jon Hamm, is seen as the ultimate villain, he really was trying to do what the people wanted of him as mayor. Yes, he did some bad things and his focus was not on the environment he was destroying, but he was portrayed
as a person who actually cares for the people for his town. Each character had an in-depth personality to them that went beyond good guy or bad guy and it was refreshing to see these more nuanced characters when a lot of kids media neglect less important characters.

Overall, even though it had a chaotic plot, the writers and animators clearly had fun making this movie and it showed throughout the film, from fun little bits to the overall growth of Mabel and Mayor Jerry as people. It is a great film for everyone, young and old.

This film is certainly a 10/10.