Review of Hoppers, directed by Daniel Chong

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently started an 8-5 job and have been trying to reclaim my sanity and hobbies by finding fun things to do on the weekends and after work, and one of my saving graces truly has been my AMC A List subscription. I’ve always had one on and off throughout graduate school, and I recently reclaimed my subscription after a brief stint of thinking I was going to move to India (long story).

Sometimes the movies I really want to see aren’t included on AMC A List, which is sad, but I accept the reality of the situation. I get a ton of use out of this subscription despite that. On a slightly different note though, I used to work professionally as a film critic, which is very much a dying career, and when I would go to the film festivals I watched everything that really excited me.

A List is also an opportunity for me to go outside of my comfort zone. Recently, at the time of typing this, I’ve seen a handful of movies I don’t think I would have ever seen if I had to actually pay for them. I see so many movies throughout different states on A List that I basically make money off of AMC, rather than spending money. I have an entire spreadsheet for it.

And that was how I ended up seeing Hoppers on a Sunday morning with my sister. We were some of the only adults in the room without kids, but they were well behaved for the most part. Someone’s toddler did get a little antsy towards the end of the movie and kept saying they already watched all of the film.

Let’s get into the review! Don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

In an effort to save the glade she grew up watching with her grandmother, one college student befriends the animals—through unorthodox means.

Our main character in this movie is Mabel Tanaka, and we first meet her as a spunky elementary schooler who kidnaps the pet animals at her school in an effort to rescue them. After getting disciplinary action and being dropped off at her grandmother’s house, her grandmother shows her how to sit still and appreciate nature and the animals around her.

Fast forward to when Mabel is nineteen. Her grandmother has now passed away, and as a college student Mabel spends her time advocating for saving the glade versus it being lost to construction. The town’s cold mayor, Jerry, doesn’t care that his new highway project will lead to mass destruction of the glade and local biodiversity.

Mabel tries to get petition signatures against the project but fails. When she chats with her professor she realizes she can find a way around this by getting beavers to inhabit the glade, but when she spots one there that night, she follows it and learns her professor’s lab has created robotic animals that they can transfer their consciousness into.

Mabel transfers her consciousness into the beaver robot and flees the lab before they force her back into her body. She ends up meeting King George of the Mammals, a beaver who trusts her vision and helps bring the animals back into the glade after she takes down a robotic tree that repelled them.

He asks Mabel to be his paw, or his advisor, but then Jerry learns what happened and installs more trees to remove the animals. George and Mabel summon the animal rulers of the Fish, Amphibians, Birds, Reptiles, and Insects. While George is unsuccessful in convincing them to help, Mabel presents Jerry as the wannabe king of mammals and accidentally sets the other rules out to kill him.

She then accidentally kills the ruler of the insects, leading George and she to be chased after. They narrowly escape with the accidental help of the university labmates, and George agrees to help her after a brief period of being despondent. At the same time, Titus, the caterpillar son of the recently deceased Insect Queen, declares himself ruler of the insects and the leader of the council.

Mabel and George, with the help of their other animal companions, kidnap Jerry right before the birds get him. The seagulls bring in Diane, a massive shark, to try and kill Jerry, but they narrowly escape. The scientists then roll up and force Mabel back into her consciousness, much to George’s despair, as he realizes she is actually human, and they’re kidnapped by the animals.

When Mabel wakes up, Titus reveals his grand plan. He forces the scientists to transfer his consciousness into a robot that looks like Jerry. Leaving everyone else tied up, Mabel gets Jerry’s consciousness into the beaver robot after they finally call a truce, and they show up at Jerry’s rally. Titus is there and ready to kill all of the humans there, but Mabel and crew, including George and the other animals (after Titus reveals his new plan to be an animal dictator, stop him before he’s able to do so.

However, the destruction of the rally setup causes a massive wildfire. Mabel narrowly escapes with George and the other animals, but the wildfire spreads towards the city. The animals realize they can help by taking down their dam, and all of the animal kingdoms come together to save the humans.

As Mabel goes through the glade, Jerry comes with the construction crew to help clean up. He admits that he wants to help come up with a plan, but this time with Mabel’s help. The film ends with her graduating, joining the scientists’ lab, and still meeting with George—with the help of text-to-speech software to communicate.

Overall Thoughts

I’ll admit it: I knew absolutely nothing about this movie beyond the lizard meme before going into this movie. I did know it was a Pixar and that they tend to put out decent movie, and this film certainly had a lot of heart in it. Both my sister and I both said we enjoyed watching it in the end.

While some of the plot points were fairly loose and had some question marks around them in terms of continuity and feasibility, this was a solid movie overall in terms of themes, plot, and characters. My personal favorite character? Still the lizard.

I say go see this one if you’re interested. It’s a solid kid’s movies with a lot of relevant themes in today’s world.

Follow me below on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Goodreads for more.