By Dan Skip Allen

I’ve watched so many Pixar movies that it’s hard to find something new to wax poetically about them anymore. They have made so many great films that it’s hard to list them all. A few of my favorites are “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles”, and “Inside Out”. It’s time to talk about how they’ve released another classic film in their long history. “Hoppers” made its debut as a teaser attached to “Elio” last summer, and it’s finally coming out this March in theaters, not on Disney Plus like others have in recent years. It’s going to be a movie kids and adults alike will like. 

Mabel (Piper Curda) is a rambunctious teenager as she was a toddler as well. She has a perchance for loving animals of all kinds. When she visited her grandmother as a child, she learned about a glade filled with all kinds of wildlife. She was at home around all of these beautiful creatures. Fast forward to her as a teenager again and she finds out about the Beaverton Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) who has plans to finish his beltway, highway, by putting it through the glade that this teenager loves so much. She ends up getting involved with some scientists who have a similar love for furry creatures as much as she does. They have a special technology to communicate with the animals of nature. This causes some issues for Mayor Jerry but also makes things hard for a human to get things done the way she wants. She ends up having to communicate with the animals in a strange and unusual way. This adds a bit of humor to this otherwise serious animated film. 

With any Pixar film, there are two things they like to do. They like to have a story that kids will love, and they like to have a story that adults can follow along with as well. This film has cute and cuddly animals and a quirky element that adds a humorous twist to the story. The twist is teased in the marketing and trailers, but kids probably don’t see that stuff like their parents. The adult story is an environmental story also involving politics, animal preservation, and  overpopulation. These are aspects that are important to me. So I related to this story quite a bit.

In Florida, there was a highway construction project that had an issue while it was being built. The planned path for the highway was through a nesting/breeding ground of a rare and endangered bird called Scrubjays in the Lake Mary area near Sanford, FL. I’m Seminole County. It’s considered the northern part of Orlando, FL. The highway had to be rerouted because of this. Ironically, this is near the house of Mouse Disneyland. I can see where the writers and filmmakers of this movie got inspiration from this event. Another environmental thing in the film was a fire, which has affected both Florida and California, quite a lot for this state. 

The voice-over cast is pretty good in this Pixar movie. Like most of the other Pixar films, this one has many good actors voicing cute cuddly animals and humans alike. Besides the ones I’ve mentioned, Bobby Moynihan, Dave Franco, Eduardo Franco, and Meryl Streep just to name a handful of people. They all play key players in the story and bring a bit of themselves to their characters but also add a bit of craziness and zany aspects to them as well. This isn’t the biggest of voice-over casts, but it’s still pretty good. Anything that Meryl Streep is in is good to me, so I’m happy to see her in the cast.

I was going into this movie not exactly knowing what it was truly going to be. The marketing didn’t reveal everything about the story or technological aspects of the story. That being said, the technology was fascinating to me. I definitely love the idea of being able to talk with animals in some way, but it’s not exactly the way people would think. The writers and directors came up with an interesting concept that kept me engaged in the movie. There was enough in this film that was original for Pixar that kept it different enough than anything I’ve seen them do in the past. They do love their cute, cuddly characters. but lately, they’ve used human characters a lot in their films.

“Hoppers” was surprisingly a very delightful and engaging film. I was completely engrossed by the child aspects of the story, namely the animals and the environmental parts of the story. Specifically, the highway project and rerouting of it are parts of the story along with the fire that hit me hard. This stuff affected me in my own life, so that’s why they made me care about them in this movie. I give the director and writers a lot of credit for doing such a geopolitical story yet still infusing fun aspects into the story. Hopefully people will see this movie as it comes out in March around spring break for kids and parents will need to take them to something to keep them occupied during the time they are out of school for a week. I liked this one, though. It’s another very good Pixar film. It is very surprising for me to say because I wasn’t looking forward to it much.

4 stars