'Hoppers' is a grand return to form for Pixar

The overwhelming, all-encompassing success of Inside Out 2 aside, animation behemoth Pixar has certainly taken its lumps over the past half-decade or so. Onward was genuinely incredible, but released a month into the pandemic and remains one of Pixar's most underseen offerings. Their trio of Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were all released direct to Disney+ rather than to theaters due to COVID, and while Soul won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and Turning Red had tremendous cultural impact for a time in 2022, none of those three movies ended up having anywhere near the cachet that they would/should have enjoyed in the cultural milieu (relative to Pixar's ubiquity) that would have accompanied a theatrical release. (Well, maybe Soul is about on par with how it would be remembered had it been released theatrically, but that's not a slight against it by any means. We all know how long La La Land has remained relevant in the world of white film directors Saving Jazz.) Lightyear and Elemental were both (inexplicably, in my opinion) universally reviled by critics, and Elio was met with a shrug, while both that film and Inside Out 2 caught flak for removing queer aspects of their stories after much industry fingerpointing blamed one chaste lesbian kiss for Lightyear's poor performance.

So now Pixar returns with Hoppers, which is already the studio's best-performing original film (meaning excluding sequels) since 2017's Coco. The movie, start to finish, is a sheer delight. The character design is maybe Pixar's finest of all time, from its hyper-expressive humans (including a spot-on Gavin Newsom lookalike voiced by Jon Hamm) to its plethora of adorable, goofy-as-hell animals. The movie, which is a spin on Avatar (humans find a way to put their minds inside robots that allow them to communicate with animals), is overflowing with heart and kindness from the very beginning, and very well may be Pixar's single funniest movie of all time. There are genuine belly-laughs to be had throughout, and the intersecting story of conservation, civic duty, political intrigue and family (both inherited and found) whipsaws from sheer absurdity to stillness to deep emotion to surreality in original and exhilarating ways, all of them earned. (Bonus design points for depicting the animals with large, expressive sclera and pupils when the audience is meant to understand them, and with beady solid black eyes when the humans are on the outside looking in.)

I don't know how long Hoppers will hang around in the public consciousness. (And in stark contrast to recent reviled Disney offerings like Wish, I have yet to see a single piece of Hoppers tie-ins or merch at any big box store. It apparently didn't even merit Happy Meal toys!) But at first viewing, this is unabashedly a top-tier Pixar movie. I think I'm putting it in the pantheon. In fact ...

On Monday: every Pixar movie, ranked!