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Hoppers (PG)

Cast: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Melissa Villaseñor, Meryl Streep

Release Date: March 6, 2026

Runtime: 1 hr. 45 mins.

Genre: Animation, Adventure

What if you could talk to animals and understand what they’re saying? In Disney and Pixar’s all-new feature film “Hoppers,” scientists have discovered how to “hop” human consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with animals as animals! The adventure introduces Mabel, an animal lover who seizes an opportunity to use the technology, uncovering mysteries within the animal world that are beyond anything she could have imagined.

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Review

Hoppers is Middling Pixar. By that, I mean that it's a perfectly fine animated film, especially for kids, but not an exceptional one. It lacks the unquantifiable magic that has imbued the best of the studio's offerings, operating instead within the safe, polished confines of a studio that has perhaps become too comfortable with its own legacy. This is no Toy Story or Monsters Inc. or Finding Nemo or Inside Out. Instead, Hoppers is likely to fall into the same dimly-remembered bin as Dinosaur and Elemental. It has relatable themes-dealing with the importance of environmental conscientiousness and the consequences of impetuousness-and busy action sequences but lacks the strong works-on-two-levels aspect that has characterized Top Pixar. There is a sense of formulaic efficiency here that provides entertainment without soul-stirring depth.

The story focuses on a 19-year-old girl named Mabel (Piper Curda) who uses the experimental Hopper technology to transfer her consciousness into a realistic robot beaver. Her goal is to find a way to protect a quiet grotto in danger of decimation to make way for a road project touted by Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm). To that end, she befriends a real-life king beaver, King George (Bobby Moynihan). After recruiting George to her cause, she faces an even greater challenge-getting buy-in from the other kings and queens of animals, including the Queen of the Insects (Meryl Streep) and her belligerent son, Titus (Dave Franco). The political hierarchy of the animal kingdom adds a layer of complexity, essentially creating a "United Nations" of the forest that Mabel must navigate with varying degrees of success. While attempting to foster cross-species understanding, Mabel inadvertently sparks an assassination attempt on Mayor Jerry that she must find a way to thwart.

If some of it seems like Avatar, that's a comment that director Daniel Chong and screenwriter Jesse Andrews proactively address within the text, explicitly making the comparison before dismissing it. However, while the concept of a human transferring their mind into an avatar to be able to blend with another species is right out of the James Cameron movie, that's as far as it goes. Still, it's a smart move for the screenplay to acknowledge this, thereby deflecting any criticism that might arise and providing a good laugh in the process. By leaning into the trope, the film manages to feel self-aware, even if the core narrative remains somewhat predictable.

Hoppers is engaging and does a few surprising things narratively as antagonists become allies and vice versa. There is some degree of nuance in the shifting nature of relationships where most animated films create clear lines between villains and heroes and don't engage in blurring. This is also evident in Mabel, whose penchant for environmental conservationism can be undone by her tendency toward explosions of temper. This volatility makes her a more grounded, if occasionally frustrating, protagonist whose internal growth is just as vital as her external mission.

It's difficult for an animated film to successfully blend a semi-realistic human civilization with anthropomorphic animals and this is an area where Hoppers struggles. The movie's world-building suffers as it tries to balance these two disparate aspects, often leaving the human segments feeling somewhat hollow. The scenes that work best are those self-contained within the animal world, where the internal logic is more consistent. Elements of the climax feel the strain of trying to balance the human and animal perspectives, and having Mabel keep one foot in each world diminishes the emotional weight of her relationships, as neither side feels fully realized.

A conscious decision was made to shift the animation technique away from Pixar's normally excellent photorealistic approach to something muted-kind of a midway approach between the more grounded Finding Nemo (for example) and the fantastical Zootopia. The idea is to find a style that allows for animated four-legged and two-legged creatures to share the screen without creating a disconnect between hyper-realistic animals and more cartoonish humans, but I'm not sure it really works. My first reaction was that it looked retro, and I'm not sure I thought of it as a compliment. The aesthetic choice feels less like a bold new direction and more like a stylistic compromise that lacks visual pop.

Disney doesn't view Hoppers as one of its 2026 crown jewels. It's a nice, family-friendly treat dumped into theaters when there's still snow on the ground in many areas, serving as a placeholder rather than a prestige event. It's a pleasant enough feature, and while it will likely satisfy its target audience, I'd be surprised if this is the cornerstone for the next great Pixar franchise.

© 2026 James Berardinelli

Synopsis

What if you could talk to animals and understand what they’re saying? In Disney and Pixar’s all-new feature film “Hoppers,” scientists have discovered how to “hop” human consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with animals as animals! The adventure introduces Mabel, an animal lover who seizes an opportunity to use the technology, uncovering mysteries within the animal world that are beyond anything she could have imagined.