Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
The opening minute of ‘Hoppers’ makes its protagonist Mabel instantly likable: she is an adorable six-year-old schoolkid, and the second class gets over, she tries to rescue the resident turtle from its cage, along with all the other captive pets in the school. Unfortunately, the daring mission is jeopardized by the teachers.
Directed by Daniel Chong, this Disney-Pixar animated film follows Mabel’s (voiced by Piper Curda) adventures as she fights to preserve a glade where she spent much of her childhood with her beloved grandmother. When the 19-year-old accidentally discovers a secret technology developed by a group of professors that allows humans to transfer their consciousness into robots, she sneaks into the body of a beaver robot and ventures into the animal world. Her plan? Convince the local wildlife to return to the abandoned glade, because if the animals reclaim it, the mayor (Jon Hamm) will no longer be able to bulldoze the area to build a freeway.
Is the idea wholly original? Not really. In fact, the film beats viewers to the punch by having Mabel excitedly declare, “Ooh, this is like Avatar!” when she learns about the professors’ mind-hopping technology (hence the term “Hoppers”). Her professor is, of course, deeply offended by the comparison and quickly points out that it is nothing like Avatar.
She’s not entirely wrong. ‘Hoppers’ is very much its own thing, even if it shares Avatar’s fascination with inhabiting another body and its familiar “nature versus greedy humans” theme. It’s also every bit as colorful and visually engaging. And instead of romance, “Hoppers” offers an endearing friendship between Mabel’s beaver-robot version and a real beaver called George (Bobby Moynihan), an influential figure among the wildlife.
Although Mabel isn’t inhabiting a real beaver, her arrival in the animal world causes quite a commotion, disrupting the community’s long-established “pond rules,” which is one of the primary conflicts in the tale. And of course convincing the animals to return to the glade proves easier said than done, especially with the professors scrambling to pull her out of the robot’s body and the mayor pushing ahead with plans to destroy the area for construction.
“Hoppers” runs for 1 hour and 44 minutes, and while both the opening half-hour and the climactic final act are excellent, the film does suffer from some pacing issues in its middle stretch. Mabel’s determination to save the glade gets obsessive, causing her to make selfish decisions that create problems for the very animals she’s trying to help. The story becomes a little too fixated on her perspective, leaving several supporting characters underexplored.
It would’ve definitely been more fun to see some of the other animal characters get a little more space, and a few more minutes featuring the professors who created the hopping technology wouldn’t have hut. Thankfully, the climactic scenes more than make up for it, as a touching sequence sees humans and animals setting aside their differences to work together in the wake of a disaster.
If I had to cite a recent animated film which I enjoyed more than “Hoppers”, it would be DreamWorks Animation’s “Wild Robot”, which also shares many themes with this, except that it’s about an actual robot trying to adapt to the world of animals in an island. And if you did watch and enjoy “Wild Robot”, you most likely love “Hoppers” too.
Rating: 8 on 10. Watch Hoppers on Disney+ Hotstar
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