Pixar Finally Gets It Right, And There’s A Twist Parents Won’t See Coming

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Parents today have every reason to mistrust Pixar. From “Lightyear” to “Elio,” which would have depicted an 11-year-old boy as “queer” had audiences not panned test screenings, its films are literally getting gayer. But its latest offering, “Hoppers,” proves that when the company dispenses with identity box-checking, it can still create a story that will delight parents and children alike. 

I’ll admit I was skeptical going into the theater; the film’s premise had me anticipating an environmental screed. Mabel, a 19-year-old who once spent her school days freeing class pets from their cages, is embroiled in a battle with her city’s mayor, who wants to build a highway over a pond where she used to watch the local fauna with her grandmother. After stumbling upon her college professor’s secret research project, she uses the technology to put her own mind in the body of a robotic beaver and infiltrate the habitat to enlist the animals’ help in stopping the construction project.

What sounds like a throwback to the peak Greta Thunberg days is actually a heartwarming and hilarious commentary on the good in humanity, Teddy Roosevelt-style environmentalism, and what happens when the downtrodden finally get power. The twist in the film’s second act is so good that I have to spoil it in order to discuss the movie’s moral themes.

If you’d like to watch “Hoppers” with your (slightly older) kids, which I recommend that you do, read the rest at your own peril.

The pond is a special place for Mabel because it’s where her grandmother taught her to control her childhood anger issues. “It’s hard to be mad when you feel like you’re part of something big,” her grandmother tells her. At a time when Generation Z seems to spend its time yelling at people online or literally celebrating (alleged) murderers, the gentle reminder that we humans, and animals, are all part of the same big world is well-timed.

Mabel starts the movie off as the typical rebellious teenager: She steals the beaver tech to use it for her own ends, tricks her new animal friends into believing she is one of them, and presumes to know what’s best for the animals and their ecosystem. She believes she’s better than the rest of those meddlesome humans, but her initially well-meaning interference disrupts the delicate balance of the animal kingdom. As one bug says to her, “You stole, you lied, you used us!”

Thanks to Mabel’s decision to rile up the animals, they, led by a blood-thirsty butterfly, decide to stop the construction project from continuing by “squishing” the mayor. Now, instead of rescuing the animals, Mabel finds herself desperately trying to save the life of her arch-nemesis. 

Mabel’s activism comes from a good place: her love for animals and her memories of her grandmother. But it exhausts her. She is tired of feeling “like I can’t make a difference,” she says. It is just that desire to stamp down her feeling of powerlessness that makes her lose her moral compass, pursuing whatever avenue she can just to feel like she can do something.

After convening a council of the animals, Mabel grows so flustered by the butterfly queen that she reflexively solves the problem with a simple squish. The shocking moment (hilarious for older viewers but perhaps disturbing to younger ones) leads to mayhem in the animal kingdom and the ascendance of the butterfly’s caterpillar son, who turns out to be even more Darwinian than his mother.

Mabel quickly learns and accepts that her mad dash for power, even with good intentions, has led her to exploit and harm others. After her unceremonious squishing betrays the trust of the beaver king, he forgives her: “Trust is like a dam,” he says. “It’s gonna leak sometimes.”

The freshly pupated butterfly king, Titus, learns no such lesson. After ordering the “squishing” of the mayor, he inhabits an animatronic human body and tries to use high-decibel sound to kill a crowd of townspeople. (Helpful euphemisms such as “squishing” aside, moments of death, peril, and a misshapen face mask flying off the murderous robot are as laugh-out-loud funny for adults as they may be scary for small children.) Titus airs his grievances, complaining that he has not had the power he feels he deserves. Now, given the chance, he declares, “I’ll burn the whole world down!” I’ll let you guess how that works out for him.

“Hoppers” may have the trappings of an environmentalist sermon, but its lessons are far deeper and more traditional than that. In the end, Mabel and the mayor, who in one scene is shown making pancakes for his mother’s breakfast, are more frenemies than nemeses. The human-mind-to-animal-body project is shuttered, lest we begin to anticipate “Hoppers 2: Frankenstein’s Beaver.”

Pixar finally remembered how to make a good movie, and it just had to focus on a unique story rooted in truth: The ends don’t justify the means, might doesn’t make right, and “taking back the power” is no way to achieve human (or animal) progress.