Review: 'Hoppers' is Pixar's delightful return to form, a glorious mix of strong animation and lots of humor in the animal kingdom

Whew. Pixar, you had us worried there for a little while, with a string of not-so-amazing movies — “Elio,” “Inside Out 2,” “Elemental” and “Lightyear” — and some great movies, like “Turning Red,” “Luca” and “Soul,” relegated to streaming during the pandemic. But “Hoppers,” the first great Pixar theatrical movie since “Toy Story 4” in 2019, is worth the wait.

The central figure in “Hoppers” is Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda), a lifelong animal lover who at 19 spends more time crusading against Mayor Jerry (voiced by Jon Hamm) and his habitat-destroying freeway project than actually attending her college classes. Then she learns that her professor, Dr. Sam (voiced by Kathy Najimy), is running a secret project where she’s built robot versions of animals into which she can insert human consciousness.

Or, as Mabel says when she sees it, “It’s just like ‘Avatar,’” to which Dr. Sam insists, “It’s nothing like ‘Avatar.’” It took a multi-billion-dollar merger between Disney and 20th Century Fox to make that joke happen, and I’m here for it.

Of course, Mabel sneaks in and uses the technology, in an effort to communicate with the mammals in the habitat Mayor Jerry’s plans could destroy. Mabel learns some hard lessons at first — namely, that the animals are accepting of their fate in life, particularly as prey to other predators. Mabel befriends George (voiced by Bobby Moynihan), the beaver king of the mammals, and discovers there’s a whole council of kings representing birds, insects and other categories of animals, and they don’t always get along.

Director Daniel Chong and screenwriter Jesse Andrews (who wrote “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) create an elaborate world of creatures with fur, fins and feathers, and their complicated interactions with each other and those naked apes known as humans. They also mine those interactions for a great deal of humor, to create a more gut-busting movie than Pixar usually makes — while still packing an emotional punch and one of the wildest finishes an animated movie has delivered in a long time.

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‘Hoppers’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, March 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action/peril, some scary images and mild language. Running time: 105 minutes.