In her column, Iman Monnoo ’28 dissects the failures, successes and future direction of animated media.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
This review contains spoilers.
When I dragged my roommate to the opening night of “Hoppers” (2026) on March 6, neither of us was expecting the giggles, tears or gasps that escaped over the course of the film. For a movie slated to be another run-of-the-mill tale with anthropomorphic animals, Pixar’s latest release proved to be a heartwarming feature that reminded us of its older repertoire. At the end, my roommate and I looked at each other. We both knew: Pixar is so back.
After “Elio” (2025), I had begun to lose hope in the studio’s ability to create original films. While Elio was certainly a sweet protagonist to follow, he was unmemorable in comparison to other iconic characters like Nemo (“Finding Nemo,” 2003) or Lightning McQueen (“Cars,” 2006). Aside from the characters, the plot in “Elio” also felt uncompelling, and the marketing build-up was almost nonexistent. It’s no wonder “Elio” opened with what Variety termed “the worst start in Pixar’s 30-year history, earning $21 million domestically and $35 million globally.”
However, “Hoppers” has come in at the perfect time to cushion the studio’s fall from grace. The film follows 19-year-old Mabel Tanaka, an animal-loving college student living in the fictional, human town of Beaverton. Growing up, Mabel spent her childhood with her grandmother in a forest glade teeming with wildlife. But fast forward years later, and the animals suddenly disappear from the area, providing the town’s new mayor, Jerry Generazzo, with a convenient excuse to build a new highway and up his support among the citizens. Of course, Mabel makes it her mission to stop him.
There is a tendency for films like “The Lorax” (2012) and other productions focused on environmental messaging to paint the issue in black and white: humans are always villainized, and the isolated hero must defeat them to save the natural world. What I was most drawn to about “Hoppers” was its nuanced handling of the characters. In spite of being the hero, Mabel is chaotic and reckless, vehemently believing that she’s alone in her fight for the glade and refusing to see otherwise — even when other characters, like her college professors, are also environmentalists.
Though she’s always well-intentioned, Mabel is misguided in her attempts to force the animals back into the glade. Her solution to the mayor’s plan is to steal her professor’s revolutionary invention: a machine that transfers the human mind into a realistic, robotic animal body. That decision sets the plot into motion. Now, newly beaver-fied, Mabel infiltrates the animal world, able to effectively pass as a real animal in her new body and able to speak to the rest of the glade creatures.
The mayor isn’t strictly good or evil either. Director Daniel Chong includes scenes of the character taking care of his mother and later helping restore the glade after a fire damages it, countering the stereotypical villain narrative. The mayor represents a refreshing break away from the doomsday representations of man versus nature. As the mayor learns to work with Mabel, the film posits that maybe, just maybe, humans aren’t all that bad.
As a studio, Pixar has always been good at tugging on our heartstrings, and “Hoppers” does exactly that. It is because of these complex representations of people that we, as the audience, can sympathize with the characters and root for them to win. At the same time, the film manages to walk a tightrope between humor and depth. The script is an absolute riot, riddled with raunchy jokes that I was surprised made it into the final cut of the film. Without giving away too much, a butterfly’s speech in one scene took a surprising turn (evidenced by the gasps that erupted from the theater and the hooting laughter that followed). You’ll have to watch to find out.
More importantly, though, the team behind “Hoppers” seems to have put a unique level of care into its marketing, even post-release. For close to 20 years, Disney and Pixar artists have made visits to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford to connect with the children. In March, Ddrector-animator James Brown, alongside other artists from “Hoppers,” personally visited the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford to host a screening and a drawing workshop for the pediatric patients.
“The visits bring us so much joy, spending time with the patients and staff, drawing and talking about movies. The experience is fun and amazing every time,” Brown told Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
For both old and new fans, “Hoppers” is a witty, exciting turn that signals Pixar’s return to the top of the podium of animation studios. In a world of never-ending sequels, the original concept and exceptional script of “Hoppers” are a breath of fresh air — and I’m excited to see where Pixar is heading!