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In 2026, it may be that the most useful method by which a critic could see a new Pixar movie is to babysit a random child in front of Disney+. Instead, I saw Hoppers the old school way, as an awkward presence in a screening filled with other people’s kids. And so we asked as one: wait, what is a “Hopper” anyway?
That puzzlement has been a curse of recent Pixar movies, their basic premises squintingly overthought. Here, director Daniel Chong defuses the problem in a charmingly self-aware moment I won’t blow for you. But the factual answer lies in a secret lab, where the brains of human volunteers are “hopped” into robot critters, dispatched in turn to study animal behaviour.
The experiment is duly hijacked by Mabel, a plucky Gen-Z eco-activist. Desperate to save an idyllic glade from a coming freeway, she hops herself into a robot beaver, then gatecrashes the animal kingdom to lead a fightback.
If you are put in mind of Doctor Dolittle, so was I. If you thought of Avatar, so did Chong, who drily namechecks it. Call that a perk of sharing a corporate parent in Disney.
The movie is invested with care and energy, sprinkled with gags and neat flights of fancy. I can report first-hand that there were gasps and laughs, and not only from me. The mood can be bittersweet too, with flashes of sadness and grown-up insight about the realities of nature.
There is also a final-act dose of peril that audibly shook younger audience members. (“I don’t like this,” a small voice cried.) The irony is it came while the movie was doing narrative gymnastics to find a villain with no connection to the bulldozers. Hoppers, then, may leave a child with mixed feelings. The industrialist parent, though, will love it.
★★★☆☆
In cinemas from March 6
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