REVIEW: HOPPERS

In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers.

Let me back up ...

Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers, sees Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting.

Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to remotely pilot the body of a robotic recreation of, in this case, a beaver. And once she's infiltrated the nearest colony of woodland animals, and earned favor with the benevolent mammal king, King George (Bobby Moynihan), it seems she's finally secured the means to correct the encroachment of the humans. But Mabel quickly discovers that she is not advocating in a vacuum, and once her actionable message is out there, she may not be able to control what the world does with it.

So, this is an ecological film in the vein of WALL-E or Watership Down. Animation has been here a few times. The common impulse for this directive is the "Wild Robot" approach of making the nature rich and ornate, to express the beauty of nature through vivid and picturesque animation techniques. Not so here. The character designs in Hoppers are much less contoured or refined, more akin to the likes of Cartoon Network than anything we've seen from Pixar.

The designs of this world feel more geared toward hand-drawn animation, and Chong applying his design method from We Bare Bears onto CG models comes with some costs. While most of the film traffics in pleasant nonsense, there are some scenes of genuine pathos and authentic stakes, and trying to convey all that with such basic designs had mixed results, like trying to have a serious conversation using mostly emojis.

But there were gains to be had also. Displaying this ecosystem as something elastic and chaotic reveals a different face for the animal kingdom: maybe they're just as messy as the human world, and just as proximate to madcappery. This is perhaps the most unhinged we have ever seen Disney or Pixar. These laughs are impossible to anticipate. I saw and heard things I never imagined I would find in a Pixar movie. (Just ask Meryl Streep.) I think I still default to the Bambi approach to this conversation, but I would be remiss to not concede that it takes a special eye to look at the animal world and imagine those critters are just as crazy as we are, and maybe that's why they deserve an advocate.

Relative unknown Piper Curda brings vitality into her role. I came out of this thinking that Jon Hamm should consider doing more voice work, but apparently he has participated in features like Transformers One or Minions, so maybe I'm just late to this party. Meanwhile, career voice talent, Bobby Moynihan, makes King George into a sort of couch potato hero. This is a very well-cast film.

Early scenes have Mabel's support team telling her that hopping technology is meant to be used just for observing and that if she tries to directly interfere with the animal kingdom, there will be catastrophic consequences. The transgression that first earns her an audience with King George is stopping a grizzly bear from eating a beaver she rightfully claimed. What right does she have to interfere with the status quo? So, it's not totally clear at first how far this movie is going to challenge her righteous convictions as a young person trying to hold onto something that perhaps never truly belonged to her.

I knew I never would be able to sign off on this film had it ultimately tried to talk Mabel down from caring too much or learning to accept reckless human consumption as just some natural process that didn't actually hurt the animals so just "fuhgeddaboudit, man!" There were parts of the narrative where I worried that's what they were building toward.

So I had the experience of not knowing what the film's ultimate takeaway was going to be--not something I usually encounter with children's entertainment. The marketing seems to want the audience to discover for themselves while they're watching the film what it means to try to be a counteragent in a world that prefers to placidly flow down the river of progress and development, and so I'll respect that.

But I will say that ... I suppose if the movie does pull off saying something both novel and useful, I honestly think part of that is because it manages to defuse its thesis across a lot of loosely related truisms about community, purpose, trust, and the like. In the end, the movie becomes as much about humanizing the powerholders making these messes as it is about anthropomorphizing an underclass of animals. Someone's probably already drafting a piece about how this is the latest example of Disney needing to water down its messaging to appease its capitalist sovereigns. I myself wouldn't call this toothless, there is still action to be taken at the end, or imagine that present struggles would be worse if we found more peaceable ways to frame these conflicts.

Pixar has pivoted in recent years to elevating the role of the auteur with outings like ONWARD, Turning Red, and, to an extent, last year's ELIO. I don't know how much of Hopper's situation is autobiographical for Daniel Chong, but his unique artistic sensibility in this film does feel like a highly personalized toolset, which makes Hoppers feel truly unique within the Pixar library.

It'll be interesting to see where this movie takes the future of Pixar animation. I honestly hope this movie doesn't do for Pixar animation what Thor - Ragnarok did to the MCU, but in the meantime, I think all the other Pixar gems owe a little gratitude to this movie for reminding us just how versatile this Pixar style can be, and probably always was.

--The Professor

Comments

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Westerns Riding off into the Sunset

In both my Les Miserables and Moulin Rouge! pieces, I made some comment about the musical as the genre that receives the least love in the modern era. I stand by that, but I acknowledge there is one other genre for which you could potentially make a similar case. I am referring of course to the western film. See, musicals at least have Disney keeping them on life support, and maybe one day we’ll get the Wicked movie Universal has been promising us for fifteen years [FUTURE EDIT: All good things, folks ]. But westerns don’t really have a place in the modern film world. Occasionally we’ll get films like No Country for Old Men, which use similar aesthetics and themes, but they are heavily modified from the gun-blazing-horseback-racing-wide-open-desert w esterns of old. Those died, oddly enough, around the same time musicals fell out of fashion. Professors Susan Kord and El...

The Pleasantville Lie

Lynn Hunt, American Historical Association, University of California 2002, is best known for her 2007 work Inventing Human Rights , a cornerstone for academic work on the history of human interaction. This landmark work tracked the developing concept of human empathy across European history, especially the function that art and literature played in allowing humans to recognize the interiority and dignity of other humans who were different from them. But in 2002, she shared in the May Issue of Perspectives on History her observations in “presentism,” and the uphill battle of even getting students to engage with history at all, Gladiator (2000) “Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forebears constantly fail to measure up to our ...

Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre: Nights of Cabiria (1957) “For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.” Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to pontificate in this same manner. But film ...

The Belle Complex

As Disney fandom increasingly moves toward the mainstream, the discussions and questions that travel around the community become increasingly nuanced and diverse. Is the true color of Aurora's dress blue or pink? Is it more fun to sit in the back or the front on Big Thunder Mountain? Is the company's continued emphasis on producing content for Disney+ negatively impacting not only their output but the landscape for theatrical release as a whole? However, on two things, the fandom is eternally united. First, Gargoyles was a masterpiece in television storytelling and should have experienced a much longer run than it did. Second, Belle's prom dress in the 2017 remake was just abominable. While overwhelmingly successful at the box office, the 2017 adaptation is also a bruise for many in the Disney community. Even right out the gate, the film came under fire for a myriad of factors: the auto-tuned soundtrack, Ewan McGregor's flimsy accent, the distracting plot...

All The Ways Sunset Boulevard Has Aged Gracefully

So, stop me if you’ve heard this before: Hollywood has a dark side. Particularly in the wake of something like #MeToo or the double strikes of 2023, you can really get a sense for just how famishing, even degrading, it can be trying to make a living in Hollywood. But of course, it all goes back much further than those. One of my very first essays for this blog, for example, was a catalogue of all the ways Hollywood ravaged Judy Garland . Yet for all its mess, we cannot take our eyes off of Hollywood, or the people who build it. Stardom in particular becomes a popular focal point—what is it really like being on the other side of all that spotlighting? And Hollywood has naturally supplied the market with all sorts of imaginings for this as well. Thus, each generation gets its own version of A Star is Born. John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man (1952) Ty Burr wrote in his landmark work, Gods Like Us , “...

Notoriously Human: Alicia and the "Strongfemalecharacter"

The further I dive into classical Hollywood, the more taken I am by all its fascinating contradictions. This wasn't, I'll acknowledge, a period in American history which we think of as being kind toward women or recognizing their autonomy. The Mark of Zorro (1920) I think the collective point of reference most people have for women in old movies is the sort of hero's trophy who waits around for the guy to swoop in and carry her out of the mess she has made for herself, and that image has some basis in how Hollywood itself behaved. But film history covers a lot more than just that one type. The Hays Code prohibited illicit sexual material on film, among other things, and was in effect until the early 1960s. Because sexual content was greatly monitored and regulated, female characters weren’t really objectified--at lea...

PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 5 Films I Missed in 2020

Given the peculiar nature of this year’s run of movies, neither a traditional “Best Films of 2020” nor a traditional “Most Anticipated Films of 2021” feel appropriate. Instead, I’m going to do something in between: A spotlight of movies that I was looking forward to in 2020 that have now been bumped into a 2021 release date. There are other films set to release in 2021 that I have on my radar (most of them simply premiering later in 2021 than originally planed), but here are five films that I missed this year in 2020. This installment of Professor’s Picks is partway between a memorial and a forecast. Weep with me, celebrate with me, whichever jives with your inner truth. Anyways . . . five movies long eager to graduate from my list of anticipated movies. 1. A Quiet Place: Part II March 20, 2020 April 23, 2021 September 17, 2021 May 28, 2021 Admittedly,...

Reveling in the Mixed Messages of Miss Congeniality

In book ten of Metamorphoses, Greek poet Ovid tells the tale of Pygmalion, a talented sculptor living in the height of ancient Greek society. According to the story, Pygmalion’s sculpting prowess was so impeccable that one of his pieces, a marble woman he christened Galatea, was said to be the lovelier than any woman of flesh and blood. Pygmalion was so taken by his creation that he brought her exotic gifts, kissed her marble cheeks, even prepared a luxurious bed for her. Pygmalion so pined to be loved by Galatea that he prayed to the goddess Aphrodite to allow Galatea to reciprocate his love and affection. Aphrodite was apparently in a good mood that day, so she granted Pygmalion’s wish, giving life to Galatea, whom he then wed. The story of Pygmalion is in essence the story of a man who creates his own idealized woman out of whole cloth (or more appropriately, marble), endowing her with all the traits that he finds appealing or alluring. The story also provides a m...

REVIEW: Star Wars - The Mandalorian and Grogu

I haven't historically considered myself a "Star Wars" kid. And to be clear, I take no pride in saying that or anything. I respect the property and what it's given to pop culture. But I do feel like it's worth mentioning in this review that I didn't really go into Jon Favreu's The Mandalorian and Grogu thinking I had much of what I'd call nostalgia for this movie to exploit. And yet watching this movie, I found myself hearkening back to the things about Star Wars that caught my attention as a kid. For me, that was the gladiator-style match in "Attack of the Clones." This film offers quite a few roller-coasters along those lines. And as far as the creature designs go for the monsters in these arenas, they were quite good. I wasn't trying too hard to anticipate which were computer-generated and which were puppeted, but the aesthetics of both the Jim Henson era and the Spielberg era sat very well here in this vessel....

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog