At the suggestion of my pal Tom, who I saw Scream 7 with last week, it seemed like a good time for me to try to do more video reviews, particularly if I could knock them out without doing a ton of editing.
Some of you may notice that I don’t often review animation, partially because I don’t have kids, but often, because the screenings are early on a Saturday morning way uptown, and honestly (and I apologize to my pals Carlos and Alessio), I just don’t care that much about animation.
In the case of Hoppers, I was expecting more of a talking animals movie, but it’s actually a wonderful and crazy love letter to nature and animals with a great protagonist in 19-year-old Mabel Tanaka, voiced by Piper Curda. It’s directed and cowritten by Daniel Chong, who has done something called “We Bare Bears,” and it features a voice cast that includes everyone from Jon Hamm to Bobby Moynihan to other “SNL” vets, including Melissa Villaseñor, Vanessa Bayer, and Ego Nwodim, other great comic actors like Sam Richardson, the sadly gone Isiah Whitlock Jr, Dave Franco, and even … Meryl Streep?!
The general premise is that Mabel Tanaka has a local pond in her town of Beaverton, her happy place that she spent time at with her grandmother, that’s in danger of being cemented over to make way for a super-highway, planned by the Beaveron Mayor Jerry, voiced by Hamm. The two of them go at it, until Mabel decides to revive the animal population of the pond, now devoid of animals, herself. She finds a beaver, but then learns that there is a group of university scientists, including the Kathy Najimy-voiced Dr. Sam, who have built realistic animal robots that they can control with their minds. Mabel hijacks a beaver robot with the intention of communicating with the animals and resuscitating the animal population of her glade, and things just get weird and dark, but hilariously so, from there.
I’m not a big fan of hyperbole, but the reason why this is one of the better Pixar movies in a very long time is that it finds that really difficult combination of story, humor, and emotion in perfect increments, and it includes a fantastic score by Mark Mothersbaugh, one of his best in recent memory, but you can learn more about the movie in my video review above.
I’m sure that this will be among my favorite movies of the year that will make my Top 25 by year’s end, mainly since it’s such a glorious (and hilarious) love letter to science and nature, as we reside under a government that doesn’t respect either.
Rating: 9/10
Hoppers opens nationwide on March 6.
