(courtesy IMP Awards)
Really believing in something, in its purest and least judgmental form, is among life’s greatest joys.
There’s nothing like the passion that courses through your veins, the sparkle of idea fizzing with excitable urgency around your brain and your heart being fully engaged in something that really matters to you.
Someone who knows exactly what that feels like is Mabel Tanaka (Lila Liu as a child, Piper Curda as 19-yer-old adult), the protagonist of Pixar’s latest animated masterpiece, Hoppers, who is an ardent environmentalist, even as a small girl, thanks in part to her grandmother (Karen Huie) who takes her angry, activist granddaughter under her wing and teaches her the soul-restorative value of sitting still and being a part of nature.
At first, Mabel can’t see the point of being and not doing and can’t anything moving in the forested glade behind her grandmother’s house but as she sits uncharacteristically still and quiet, she hears birdsong and beavers coursing through the water building their dam and dragonflies flitting between rushes and the surface of the water.
It’s magical being “part of something big” says Mabel’s grandmother, a sentiment she takes completely to heart – Mabel is not one for half measures or ignoring impulsive prompts, which both hinder and help her as the film progresses – so much so that when the now university student finds out that the sleazily ambitious young mayor, Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) is going to ram a freeway right through the beloved glade that matters even more to her now her grandmother has died, she can’t just sit by and let it happen.
It’s at this point that all of her high-minded idealism and love of nature instilled in her by her meditatively patient grandmother goes right out the window, her passion taking on a militaristic tone that is a theme of Hoppers throughout which celebrates believing in things but also the dangers of taking that too far.
She tries to take on the mayor and fails and in a bid to get some help from her uni professor, Dr Samantha “Sam” Fairfax (Kathy Najimy), discovers that the biology researcher has just perfected a technology which allows people to download their consciousnesses into robot animals, allowing far more naturalistic research of fauna that has hitherto been the case.
That is where the title of this wholly delightful and brilliantly nuanced clever, and often riotously funny film, has its origins, powered by the fact that Mabel, not even pausing to think for a second, downloads into a beaver’s body and proceeds to save the glade from the inside.
her rash act, driven by passion and an abiding sense of missing her grandmother and everything she stood for, sets in train a story that is heartfelt, thoughtful, Twilight Zone-level bats**t crazy at times (in the best and most gloriously loopy of ways) and dedicated to the idea that when we, as in nature and humanity, are all part of the same interconnected whole.
If this all sounds a little loo loo-lala New Agey, the wonderful thing about Hoppers, among many wonderful things it needs to be noted and the shouted from the rooftops because this film is a comprehensive treat in every way possible, is that it makes feel so human and naturalistically grounded.
Even when faces are sliding off robots and sharks are flying through the air – the scenes involving Diane (Vanessa Bayer), a shark assassin, are fabulously, giddily unhinged and worth the price of admission alone – the film still somehow feels like its very much ordinary, everyday concerns.
And that’s quite a feat because as the movie picks up speed, and Mabel’s well-intentioned efforts to save the glade, and the wildlife that fills it in wondrously cosy profusion, Hoppers does not stay completely in completely sensible lane.
That’s no bad thing, of course because it benefits from being willing to defy orthodoxy and go off on its own idiosyncratically meaningful path, but by keeping its eye firmly on the inescapable fact that we all share this planet, animals, birds, fish, insects, reptiles and humans alike, and can’t disregard each other’s existence (though the mayor gives it a red hot go), Hoppers feels like it actually says something worthwhile and lastingly valuable.
The fact that it manages to be off the charts ridiculously run and as heartfelt as it gets is vintage Pixar, of course.
But Hoppers seems to go even harder on the animation studio’s trademark mix of poignancy and hilarity, throwing some really nuanced thoughtfulness about grief, passion, fighting for what matters without forgetting that there are real people, and yes fauna, in the mix too.
It never really puts a foot wrong, with each of its characters hitting their mark every time, the story switching gears between incredibly meaningful and off the charts wildly weird and silly without once breaking a sweat or stumbling, and your heart soaring and crashing in equal measure before setting you down at the end feeling quietly, even buoyantly, good about the world.
That’s quite the journey given how bad the world is right now, but also how much is expertly stuffed into this film – more and more is the order of the day but it works flawlessly, never once feeling like the film’s creators have tried too much – but Hoppers manages it elegantly and with effervescently affecting fervor, heart and brain in equal alignment and entertaining every step of the way.
Unlike some critics who feel this is a return to form for Pixar after recent efforts like Elio and Elemental that didn’t quite hit the mark, I’ve enjoyed the last few years of the studio’s films as much as anything they did before, but Hoppers is definitely a high water mark, full of intelligence and passion, whimsy and grounded intensity that slots together perfectly, delivering up a film full of fun, eye-popping visuals that gets you thinking, makes you feel a lot and which ultimately feel like the world can be saved and maybe we’re the ones to do it (as long as we can dodge the flying sharks, of course).
Go behind the scenes …