{"id":34043,"date":"2026-03-06T16:10:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T08:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=34043"},"modified":"2026-03-06T16:10:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T08:10:34","slug":"hoppers-review-ign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=34043","title":{"rendered":"Hoppers Review – IGN"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Hoppers is in theaters now.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exactly a new observation to say that Pixar\u2019s once golden reputation is not what it used to be. The 3D animation studio has never disappeared from the cultural conversation, but after revolutionizing the industry in the 1990s and delivering a string of unqualified masterpieces in the 2000s, Pixar has only occasionally reached the level of greatness that was once synonymous with their name. Part of that is because of their overreliance on sequels, but even their newer originals don\u2019t always match the pedigree of all-time greats like Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, or Wall-E. Their latest film, the sci-fi animal comedy Hoppers<\/u>, is not on that level of inspiration, but it still comes out the other side as an entertaining and admirable effort.<\/p>\n

Hoppers is about Mabel (Piper Curda), a failing college student and animal lover from the city of Beaverton who is trying to protect a beloved glade from being demolished by a highway construction project. She\u2019s opposed in this effort by Beaverton mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm), who insists he\u2019s received the construction permits because the glade\u2019s animals have already vacated the premises. No points for guessing that the animals didn\u2019t leave purely of their own accord, but Mabel\u2019s investigation into why leads her through a circuitous series of events that result in her mind being placed inside the body of a robotic beaver created by one of her professors. Mabel uses the \u201chopping\u201d (as in, brain hopping) technology to communicate with the animals and figure out how to get them to move back.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s actually a lot more to the plot than this basic premise, with director Daniel Chong and writer Jesse Andrews\u2019 story possessing a certain madcap energy as it moves through numerous big ideas and fresh complications. The frenzied pace ensures it never loses the audience\u2019s attention, but it does feel like Hoppers would succeed better at its emotional moments if it were willing to let the story sit and breathe more often. But what keeps the film anchored is the throughline of Mabel\u2019s desire to make \u201cjust one thing\u201d work out at a time when she feels like everything has fallen apart, and why her overeager efforts sometimes make things worse despite her intentions. She\u2019s assisted in this journey by King George (Bobby Moynihan), the friendly monarch of the local mammal kingdom, who tries to see the best in everyone even to a fault.<\/p>\n

I really have nothing but good things to say about King George; while Hoppers isn\u2019t one of Pixar\u2019s best movies, King George does deserve a spot among their best characters. He\u2019s a hard character to make work because his main trait is his inherent goodness and basic empathy for literally everyone and everything, which would make for a boring figure in the wrong hands. But Moynihan\u2019s performance and Andrews\u2019 script ensure his somewhat naive worldview makes sense because he wholeheartedly believes it, willing the best out of others by seeing it before they do. The relationship between him and Mabel may hit one or two predictable dramatic beats, but their chemistry still wins out by the film\u2019s final act.<\/p>\n

King George deserves a spot among Pixar’s best characters.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

That said, the way King George runs his kingdom and how it relates to the film’s world-building is one of Hoppers\u2019 biggest drawbacks. King George\u2019s forest abides by \u201cpond rules,\u201d which can be basically summed up as \u201cwe\u2019re all in this together\u201d (literally said out loud in dialogue). This is a nice sentiment, but it doesn\u2019t square logically when you think it through. Similarly to 2024\u2019s The Wild Robot, Hoppers gets a bit cutesy with its talking animal community, showing predator and prey all being friendly with each other, although Hoppers introduces the caveat that it\u2019s okay for the predators to eat \u201cwhen they\u2019re hungry,\u201d hand-waving the conflict with deaths treated as gags. Sure, it\u2019s amusing when an animal explaining pond rules is inexplicably eaten mid-speech, but it doesn\u2019t change that it\u2019s a band-aid for an irreconcilable problem with the setting\u2019s believability.<\/p>\n

Hoppers\u2019 lack of verisimilitude is what keeps it from matching Pixar\u2019s top tier efforts. Pixar films such as Monsters Inc. or The Incredibles created worlds that were entirely separate from our own, which allowed their bizarre rules to still come off as internally consistent. But when Finding Nemo was clearly set in our world (beyond the \u201canimals can talk\u201d conceit), it didn\u2019t move into the fantastical, basically playing fair with our understanding of how animals behave even with their anthropomorphized personalities. Hoppers feels akin to Finding Nemo in terms of what it\u2019s trying to narratively accomplish with its world, but takes on too many extra incongruous elements. That ability to buy into the logic of a film\u2019s setting is what lets the audience also buy into the emotional stakes of the characters, and this is where Hoppers starts to fall apart.<\/p>\n

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Between a surprise villain whose plan is established and thwarted far too quickly to leave real impact, the confusing detail that Mabel has to be the one to explain to the animal monarchs that humans are encroaching on their territory so they\u2019re pushed into action (wouldn\u2019t they know that already?), and a well-meaning but ultimately disingenuous end to the conflict between Mabel and Jerry, Hoppers has a few too many rough edges to get full marks. But the film still features plenty of humor and sharply directed sequences (of particular note is how it finds a hilarious way for a shark to participate in a car chase). It also goes out on a high note, delivering a sweet conclusion for Mabel and King George that doesn\u2019t undo what was sacrificed in order to get there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Hoppers is in theaters now. It\u2019s not exactly a new observation to say that Pixar\u2019s once golden reputation is not what it used to be….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[17067,1419,28],"class_list":["post-34043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-hoppers","tag-ign","tag-review","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}