Hoppers Review | Pixar’s Funny, Moving, Big-Hearted Animated Triumph

Directed by Daniel Chong | 2026 | Rated PG

Pixar has outdone itself with Hoppers, a joyful, inventive, and genuinely moving animated feature that ranks among the studio’s most accomplished recent work. Directed by Daniel Chong with a script from Jesse Andrews, the film combines ecological advocacy, grief, personal growth, and raucous comedy into something that feels wholly original. It is the kind of movie that reminds audiences why animation, at its finest, can reach emotional depths that live-action rarely touches.

At the center of Hoppers is Mabel Tanaka, voiced with tremendous conviction by Piper Curda. Mabel is a college student in the city of Beaverton who has carried a fierce love of nature since childhood, nurtured by her late grandmother during visits to a verdant forest glade. When the charismatic but scheming Mayor Jerry Generazzo (a wonderfully smarmy Jon Hamm) announces that a new highway will pave over her beloved glade, Mabel’s grief and fury ignite the story.

What Chong and Andrews understand so well is that righteous anger and deep sorrow are not opposites; they are the same wound wearing different faces. Mabel’s journey is fundamentally about learning to transform those feelings into something productive, and the film traces that arc with a sensitivity that will resonate with viewers of every age.

The film’s central conceit, in which Mabel commandeers a robot beaver built by her biology professor Dr. Samantha Fairfax (a delightful Kathy Najimy) and uses it to transfer her consciousness into the animal world, sounds preposterous on paper. On screen, however, it works beautifully. The film plays the premise with just enough knowing winks, including a cheerful dig at a certain James Cameron blockbuster, while keeping its emotional core grounded and sincere.

Once inside the glade’s animal community, Mabel encounters King George, the gentle beaver monarch of the local mammal kingdom. Voiced by Bobby Moynihan in a career-best performance, George is that rarest of animated characters: one whose fundamental decency never tips into blandness. He greets every creature by name, holds firm to a set of communal “Pond Rules,” and believes, with a kind of stubborn grace, that everyone is capable of doing right by one another. George’s warmth gradually softens Mabel’s sharp edges, and the friendship that grows between them is the genuine emotional heart of the picture.

Visually, Hoppers is a feast. Pixar’s artists render the natural world with extraordinary tactile richness, from the ripple of light on pond water to the intricate lattice of sticks and mud in a beaver dam. The glade feels genuinely alive, and the film’s action sequences crackle with inventive energy. A late set piece involving a shark named Diane, a car chase, and a particularly creative bit of marine logistics is the kind of pure, giddy filmmaking that sends audiences into delighted laughter.

The voice ensemble is stacked. Meryl Streep lends imposing authority to the Insect Queen, Dave Franco has a field day as her scheming offspring, and brief appearances by Vanessa Bayer and Melissa Villasenor leave a surprisingly strong impression. Jon Hamm, meanwhile, turns Mayor Jerry into something more nuanced than a simple antagonist as the story unfolds, and the film is generous enough to let the audience revise its first impression of him.

Hoppers wears its themes lightly but carries them far. The film’s concern for ecological preservation is genuine and informed, and it never condescends to younger viewers by oversimplifying the stakes. Its depiction of grief, particularly in the way it traces how loss can calcify into reflexive anger, is handled with a subtlety that will likely affect adult viewers most deeply. A recurring motif involving a jacket belonging to Mabel’s grandmother is quietly devastating.

At its broadest, the film is an argument for expanding our sense of community, for understanding that “we” can include far more than the people who look and think like us. The Pond Rules, especially the idea that we are all part of something larger than ourselves, carry a quiet urgency that feels genuinely timely without being preachy.

Hoppers is exactly the kind of film Pixar was built to make: big-hearted, beautifully crafted, and brave enough to take its audience’s emotions seriously. It is funny and thrilling and, in its quieter moments, genuinely affecting. King George alone is worth the price of admission, but the whole film delivers. Do not miss it.