With Hoppers, Pixar pulls off a minor miracle: realigning its trajectory away from delivering bog-standard animated features.

The once-gold-standard studio’s recent losing streak has been creative, not just financial. The billion-dollar hauls of Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 4 (2019), Finding Dory (2016), Incredibles 2 (2018) and Coco (2017) have been offset by big-time financial losers such as The Good Dinosaur (2015), Cars 3 (2017), Lightyear (2022), Elemental (2023) and Elio (2025) — the last three arriving back-to-back.

The Midas touch nearly returns — especially storytelling-wise — with this new, if slightly familiar tale. It follows 19-year-old Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) and her aggressive, wildlife-saving crusade against Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm), a not-so-evil politician bent on paving a motorway through a forest.

Because this is a children’s fantasy, Mabel’s desperate, eccentric actions soon take a fantastical turn. Her soul is transferred into the body of a robotic beaver, courtesy of her college professor’s (Kathy Najimy) hush-hush experiment.

Even though it is no masterpiece, Hoppers might have the kinetic momentum and touch of the absurd to pull the legendary Pixar out of its slump

The villain — a caterpillar destined for butterfly status — is voiced by Dave Franco, with Meryl Streep as his mother, the Queen Butterfly. Sharing the lead with Mabel is King George (Bobby Moynihan), an optimistic beaver monarch, who helps steer the film’s emotional core while delivering the few genuine, thoroughly unexpected moments of laugh-out-loud comedy.

While the nature-loving message — and to a lesser extent, the plot — feels somewhat similar to DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot (2024), which sits a big hop higher, Hoppers is good enough to pull Pixar out of its slump. The story is infused with a kinetic momentum and a touch of the absurd that keeps you hooked.

Director Daniel Chong, sharing story credit with screenwriter Jesse Andrews, embraces a flow that makes the implausible feel entirely natural. For example, a kind, giant shark named Diane (Vanessa Bayer) is airlifted by a massive flock of birds just so she can “squish” the mayor on the freeway. By this point in the film, you expect such bizarre turns of events, yet remain pleasantly surprised.

And yes, “squish” means flattened or eaten to death. Such is the law of the jungle.

However, at times, Hoppers seems to carry a desperation that mirrors Mabel’s. Given the failure of Elio — a film where executives reportedly flattened all the “woke” out of the final product — the studio’s anxiety is understandable.

Like Elio, Hoppers looks a tad cheap and safe. Technically, one can see that it is no masterpiece — Sony Pictures Animation remains the reigning king of technique and style. Its budgetary restraint, standardisation and conformity in storytelling feel like clear studio-led mandates — which, in this case, is actually a good thing. Stories need to be finely tuned, especially when a studio’s legacy is on the line.

There is a lesson to be learned here, assuming one is in the mood to learn it.

Released by Disney and HKC, Hoppers is rated PG and is currently playing in cinemas. Irrespective of the three “squishes” (one is technically a gulp), you should hop to a screening with the kiddies

The writer is Icon’s primary reviewer

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 5th, 2026