Pixar is in such a weird place at the moment, they lost a bit of love by just struggling to hits their previous heights. A run that I think starts as early as The Good Dinosaur in 2015, a film I think general audiences weren’t too worried about after they had a big hit with Inside Out. You then look at their run of Finding Dory and Cars 3, both films that struggled to hit before going onto do one of their best with Coco, and following that up with Incredibles 2 which was mostly forgettable, and Toy Story 4, a film noone asked for. They have had some success with Elemental and Inside Out 2, but still feel like they’re panicking around trying to find something that sticks. Thanks to the Spider-Verse films, animation is thriving under Sony Animation, and Dreamworks have had some renewed good reception thanks to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and The Wild Robot, so what can Pixar do to compete?
Hoppers tells the story of a young woman, Mabel who loves animals and wants to protect wildlife. When nature is being destroyed to make way for a highway, she seeks the help of her university professor, who has come up with a machine that allows them to put their consciousness in the body of a robot so they can communicate with animals to return to their home and stop the highway from being built.
I think what’s been a big difference between the Pixar that made films like Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and the Pixar currently which has made films like Luca, Onward, Turning Red, Elio is honestly just the scale of the films they make. Don’t get me wrong, I like all those films they’ve made but something like Luca which just becomes about a boy in a race. I think of the grand scale of the earlier films, and even if they were smaller stories, they were told in a way which felt like it would be world ending for our characters. Whereas now there’s a clear focus on individually characters and telling their story rather than an epic journey or moment, which I think is why a film like Elemental did well, as it doesn’t have as much of a focus on the characters.
But I think what Pixar does very well is the emotional punches it lands throughout each of its films, and I think is the deciding factor as to how well the film does both individually and at the box office. The single biggest punch this film lands is when our lead character Mabel talks to George, about being lonely and having a sense of purpose. What I wish is that we got more of that in this film, it delves into it a little bit but absolutely could’ve and should’ve explored this more. This film definitely focuses particularly on Mabel and her exploring this world she almost wants to be apart of anyway, and ends up covering similar ground to what The Wild Robot covered a couple of years ago, and did better than this film.
The voice cast is good across the board. Led by Piper Curda and Bobby Moynihan, and featuring Meryl Streep, Dave Franco, Jon Hamm and Sam Richardson, there’s no one bad that feels out of place or gives any clunky readings, it all feels perfectly in line and perfectly suited for the story.
The animation is good and still impressive, but I still think Pixar are struggling to find their own style in a world where Sony have found their style thanks to Spiderverse and Dreamworks have borrowed for a similar book for their animated films. Pixar seem like they aren’t set on a style, which sometimes feels a bit generic in terms of style, but if you look closely there’s some incrediblely impressive textures whether it’s just fur or leaves.
Overall, I liked Hoppers a fair amount and would be interested to see what they would do with a second one (which feels likely as it’s tracking for one of the highest openings for an animated film for a long time). The film has a couple of laughs, and hints at the impact that can hit with Pixar films, but doesn’t do enough to go the whole way there.
What did you think of Hoppers?
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