BEFORE: I'm going to count this one as a second Thursday movie, then skip over to Saturday, because Friday is the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and it doesn't feel appropriate somehow for me to watch a silly animated movie for kids, a bit disrespectful somehow. I mean, life goes on but I also have to live with myself and how I act, it's all semantics maybe but I choose not to count that as a day for watching silly movies, so I just started this film early on Thursday night - I'm fudging the date, really, but I do what I feel I have to do to justify my actions. Or I justify my actions by the way they make me feel, whatever.
Ego Nwodim carries over from "Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile". When I'm linking these animated films, there's kind of a line that I don't go past, which concerns "Additional voices". If a person is listed in the cast under this credit, I usually don't even mention them, even if that's a famous person that I'm aware of, for the sake of the chain I need to be 100% sure that someone voiced a character in that film, and that means a NAMED character. If someone just did crowd work or voiced a bystander, I don't feel comfortable using them as a link - God knows, it would be easier if I did, because then I could just link all the animated films using Carlos Alazraqui and Laraine Newman as links, they're credited in nearly every film. But nope, named characters only for links, because I'm not letting the chain break now, after all this time.
THE PLOT: A 19-year-old animal lover uses technology that places her consciousness into a robotic beaver to uncover mysteries within the animal world beyond her imagination.
AFTER: Back on February 28, I worked at the theater where the NY International Children's Film Festival was taking place, and on Festival Day 1, the last film of the day was "Hoppers". It was scheduled for the big theater, 470-plus seats, and we had a line for "Hoppers" that went all the way down the block. Now, the film was scheduled to open in theaters about a week later, but that made this an exclusive sort of preview screening, so yeah, the place was packed. I was managing the line outside and making sure that only about 20 or so people got in at a time so the ticket-scanners would not be overwhelmed. Also, I had to keep a good count to know when to stop seating people, when we're close to capacity we at least need to slow down a bit and/or count the number of empty seats still available, so we don't let in too many people and then be forced to kick a few people out. It's better to not let them in in the first place if there's no seats for them, sure, they'll be disappointed but getting inside and THEN finding out there's no place to sit, and getting sent home, well that would feel much worse, especially to a kid. But attendance capped out at just over 400, which was great, nobody had to be denied access or sent back out and I think everyone had a great time. What a great film to screen on Day 1 of the festival, and on a Saturday night, no less! So yeah, I had to put "Hoppers" on my list as soon as it was screening on Disney Plus, because I remembered how many people showed up for that screening!
I did kind of make one mistake, I noticed there were people sitting inside the lobby who had come out of the third screening and just sat down on some ottomans in the lobby, after a few minutes I realized they were waiting for "Hoppers" to start seating, but they were unaware that a line had been building up outside - now I should have brought this to the attention of the festival hosts, but instead I approached the family and told them they would have to get in line for "Hoppers", they couldn't just hang around in the lobby waiting for the next show, and they got a little mad at ME for telling them they had to join the line outside, or at least one of them did, but I was trying to be fair to everyone, as I wasn't yet sure if the screening was going to be at capacity or even over-capacity. "Why didn't anyone tell us sooner?" the mom asked me. I said I didn't know, but since the line outside was already halfway down the block, they should send someone to stand in it sooner rather than later, as I couldn't just seat them from the lobby, this was a new show with a separate admission and they had to wait in the line and have their tickets for "Hoppers" scanned separately. The festival host asked me why I kicked that family out of the lobby, and I had to explain that they were waiting in the wrong place, they were not made aware of the line forming outside. Oh, well, that's what I get for trying to be fair - it's really each guest's responsibility to figure out where to wait for the next show, or to ask if they're not sure.
Anyway, this is a fine enough CGI Pixar film about the importance of saving wildlife and natural habitats for animals, while at the same time demonstrating that doing this is a very complicated thing, as we humans don't necessarily think the way that animals do. Why do they settle in THIS place but not THAT place, why do they migrate? We think we know why beavers build dams, for example, but do we really understand the whole story? And then there's that complicated cycle where the animals hunt and kill each other, that whole system is very complex, too - sure we had Elton John singing about "The Circle of Life" in "The Lion King", but wasn't that just a bit simplistic and glorified? I mean, we're talking about death and eating each other, but this is not usually a preferred topic in a kiddie movie.
"Hoppers" gets into some of that, however it's also hampered by the limitations of the form - we know that animals can't talk, at least with language, but for the purposes of an animated film, that's the crutch that filmmakers have to lean on. The general rule of animation is that animals can all somehow talk to each other, but animals can't talk to humans and humans can't talk to animals, not unless some form of magic or mind-melding or body-swapping is involved. Like "Family Switch" last year, where the baby and the dog swapped souls or whatever, and they just acted like each other. Neither one could talk, so it somehow worked out, and we're left wondering whether an animal could talk if it body-swapped with an adult human, or would the animal be able to talk in the human's body? I mean, it's impossible so there's no reason to even speculate about it, right?
Not so fast, here comes "Hoppers" saying "it's OK, we've got this." Here Mabel, a young college student and environmental activist, wants to prevent the town Mayor from building a new elevated highway right where a beaver dam currently is, and he found a way to get rid of the animals, which umm, can't be good. The best plan she can come up with to stop is to try and lure a beaver back to the dam, because if one is actively living there, then the highway can't be built.
Mabel learns that her college professor has found a way to put someone's mind into a robot animal, such as a stork or a beaver, and they've been sending these drone animals out into the wild at night to study animal groups, this has been done over the years by documentary filmmakers to get undercover footage of animals for nature series, they find a way to disguise the camera to look like an animal, so the camera can be sent in very close. This takes things that big step further, if you could mind-control a robot animal, what could you learn about the animal's culture? Mabel then projects her consciousness into a robot beaver and goes looking for another one, to convince it to move into the old dam and start doing whatever it is beavers do there. I know, I know, since she looks like a beaver why not just take up residence HERSELF in the dam, and that would prevent the highway from being built? Well, first of all then the movie would be OVER, but also she doesn't know the first thing about dam-building, or even swimming, or even acting like a beaver would, so the jig would be up. Also there's some kind of time limit for how long somebody's brain can be in the robot body before needing to return.
Mabel learns more about the animals' culture than she ever thought she could, she meets King George, who is also a beaver, and he runs daily exercise sessions for all the forest animals. (Very conveniently, when Mabel is in the robot beaver body, she can talk to animals and she can also understand them. It's a huge NITPICK POINT, sure, but see above, we're limited here by the nature of the storytelling format.) King George explains that nobody wants to live near that dam any more, it's way too loud, so Mabel deduces that the mayor somehow installed speakers that emit a noise that only animals can here, and it's been keeping them away, so he can build his damn highway. The animals have all kinds of rules about who can eat whom, like whenever, but they're also very trusting, they can't believe that humans could be as evil as they are, and knowingly use technology to drive animals off a piece of land. Huh, the forest animals are just lucky that the humans didn't hunt them all down or just poison them all to clear that acre.
If you want, you can view this highway as a metaphor, for a giant arch or a government building or a ballroom, whatever you choose. Casting Jon Hamm as the Mayor is certainly in line with making a Trump-like character who's more focused on, say, re-election and polls than say, the environment or doing what's morally right. It's not a bit leap here, not at all. And of course, the futility of fighting City Hall or the White House or the Supreme Court when you're just one person who wants to save a dam or some wetlands or a trapped whale. You may know what the right thing is, but getting society to let you DO that is a whole different problem. It doesn't help if you're 19 years old and prone to fits of rage when things don't go your way.
Mabel's heart is in the right place, but she's very anti-authority, so when she finds out that George is only king of the mammals, and there's also a king of the birds, a queen of the insects and a queen of fish, and before taking any action there must be a council meeting of all the animal leaders, well, that's a lot of authority in the animal kingdom for her to butt heads with. So, it does NOT go well and she ends up alienating more animals then she convinces, putting her in the unique position of having to SAVE Mayor Jerry when the other animal leaders put out a fatwa on him. They send a squad of geese (or ducks?) to lift a great white shark out of the ocean to drop into his car. And I wonder now if somebody at Pixar had to figure out how many ducks it would take to pick up and carry a great white shark, if that's even possible.
I could list a LOT more N.P.'s, but that would probably take me all night, and I just have to move on. The technology here of course is fantasy-based, we don't have brain-switching technology from human to human, and we can't put a human consciousness into a robot, at least not yet. But I think we can control a robot with a human mind, or at least that seems more achievable, but again, for the purposes of an animated film with logistical limitations, the storytellers here needed to rely on imaginary tech that may never, ever become real.
There's a mid-film twist, of course, a reversal in Act 4 is pretty much par for the course, leading to Act 5, where "all hope seems lost". The insect ruler and the reptile queen and the fish queen force the crazy inventors to reverse-engineer the body-switching device, so the insect king can be inside a robot Mayor Jerry and hold a rally out in a forest clearing so that all of the "human king's" followers can attend the rally and get "squished" by electronic noise. Again, any resemblance to a Trump rally here is probably very accidental and also, you know, right on the money. I think maybe that some inspiration here might have come from Robert Kennedy Jr., remember when he had that worm living in his brain because he ate some raw meat or something? We used to make jokes about how if the worm had taken over his brain and was somehow controlling him, it WOULD explain some of his weirdest behavior over the years. So here there's a caterpillar's brain inside the robot Mayor, and sure, he acts erratically and very non-human at times. In other words, he's a Republican for sure.
Throw in a dumpster-fire of a rally that turns into a for-real forest wildfire, and parts of this are as timely as today's headlines, while also having a very crazy storyline that's possibly four times as complicated as it needs to be. But it's got an environmental message that kids can take to heart, and I think we maybe need a lot more movies like that so the next generation can have a shot at fixing the planet that we all collectively have broken over the last few decades. So I'm willing to let a bunch of things slide tonight.
I mean, it could have been worse - the old Grand Theft Auto video-games had a fake radio ad for an event in Liberty City called "Saturday Night Beaver", where you could go to the club and watch forest rodents disco-dance and dam-build. A kids movie with that name would have been much, much worse, although I'm thinking that the name was used at some point over the years as the title of a porn parody. I could be wrong, though.
Directed by Daniel Chong
Also starring the voices of Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan (last seen in "You're Cordially Invited"), Jon Hamm (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Kathy Najimy (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Dave Franco (last seen in "Unfinished Business"), Eduardo Franco (last seen in "Queenpins"), Aparna Nancherla (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Tom Law, Sam Richardson (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Melissa Villasenor (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), Steve Purcell (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Nichole Sakura (last seen in "Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Marty, Life Is Short"), Karen Huie, Lila Liu, Eman Abdul-Razzak, Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Freakier Friday"), Joe Spano (last seen in "Hart's War"),
RATING: 6 out of 10 "chopped logs" emojis
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