Pixar has spent the last decade making sequels that feel like homework and original films that feel like they were designed by committee to make you cry. Enter Hoppers, the studio’s latest release, which plays like someone said “what if Bambi, but absolutely unhinged?” and then actually got budget approval. The result is the best Pixar film in years—a chaotic, hilarious, genuinely weird animated comedy that remembers children can handle complexity and adults can handle joy.
The premise sounds like it was generated by a neural network trained on 3 a.m. ideas: Mabel Tanaka, a 19-year-old environmental activist, uses experimental technology to transfer her consciousness into a robotic beaver body so she can infiltrate the animal kingdom and save her grandmother’s forest glade from a corrupt mayor’s highway project. There’s a mad scientist biology professor (Kathy Najimy, perfectly cast), a beaver king who loves 80s pop rock (Bobby Moynihan, giving Paul Giamatti energy), and Meryl Streep as an insect queen who channels Miranda Priestly. Also, there’s a great white shark named Diane who gets carried by birds like a muscle car. This is all in the first act.
Director Daniel Chong comes to feature filmmaking after creating We Bare Bears, the Cartoon Network series about three bears trying to navigate human society, and that show’s DNA is all over Hoppers. The film shares its predecessor’s interest in the friction between nature and modern life, its cringe comedy sensibility, and its fundamental belief that animals are both adorable and disgusting. This is a movie where characters accept being eaten as a natural part of existence, where a worm gets carried off by a bird mid-conversation, where the circle of life is less poetic philosophy and more “if you gotta eat, eat.”
What elevates Hoppers beyond mere quirkiness is its commitment to its own logic. The “hopping” technology—where humans place their heads in a hair-dryer contraption and wake up in robot animal bodies—is explained just enough to work and then never questioned again. The film has too much plot to waste time on exposition. Mabel goes from feral activist to beaver revolutionary in approximately one scene, and the movie trusts you to keep up. The pacing is relentless, barreling through set pieces with the confidence of a film that knows it has more ideas than time.
The animation style represents a refreshing departure from Pixar’s recent trend toward photorealistic environments and generic character design. Hoppers embraces rounded, adorable simplicity—its animals look like plush toys come to life, with the clever visual trick that they appear more detailed from their perspective and have blank, beady eyes when humans look at them. It’s a subtle touch that reinforces the film’s themes about perspective and empathy, without ever stating them outright.
Jon Hamm voices Mayor Jerry, the antagonist whose smarmy political machinations give the film its human villain, and his performance acquires surprising layers as the story progresses. What starts as standard corrupt politician tropes evolves into something more complicated—a man whose own failures and fears make him sympathetic even as his actions remain inexcusable. The relationship between Jerry and Mabel becomes the unexpected emotional core, two people grieving different losses who can’t see their common ground until animals force the issue.
The voice cast is uniformly excellent. Piper Curda makes Mabel driven and occasionally abrasive—she’s described by enemies as “shrill and unlikable” and the film doesn’t entirely disagree. Moynihan’s King George is the soul of tolerance in a kingdom that runs on pragmatic violence, his optimism tested by increasingly absurd circumstances. The supporting cast—including Dave Franco as a squirrely insect prince, Melissa Villaseñor as a grizzly bear who just wants to eat, and Vanessa Bayer as that aforementioned shark—create a menagerie of distinct personalities that never blur together.
Hoppers arrives at a crucial moment for Pixar. After a run of films that felt designed to meet expectations rather than exceed them, this is a movie that takes genuine risks. It’s messy, structurally—there’s enough plot for three films, and the emotional beats don’t land with the precision of Inside Out or Coco. But it has something those films lack: the element of surprise. You genuinely don’t know what will happen next, which character will show up, which species will suddenly gain the ability to text.
The environmental message—coexistence requires listening to those different from you—is delivered with enough humor and visual invention to avoid preachiness. When Mabel rallies the animal kingdom against human encroachment, it’s thrilling because the film has earned your investment in these weird, gross, lovable creatures. The final act, described by reviewers as “an intricate roller-coaster of togetherness,” brings together dozens of species in a set piece that must be seen to be believed.
Is Hoppers a classic on the level of Toy Story or Finding Nemo? Probably not. But it’s the first Pixar film in years that feels like it could only have been made by this studio, at this moment, by this specific creative team. That’s worth celebrating. That’s worth the price of admission.
See Hoppers in theaters starting March 6, 2026, and rediscover why Pixar became the standard for animated storytelling. This is the weird, wonderful surprise you’ve been waiting for.
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