Pixar

Hoppers Review: Pixar continues to deliver with one of its best films yet

Brighton Nelson

06 Mar 2026 — 5 min read

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much from Hoppers. I'm in the rare camp that believes recent films Elio, Elemental, and Luca are all comfortably in the top ten Pixar films, with Soul at my #11 spot. I truly believe that Pixar has never lost any of its wonderful spark. However, Hoppers looked more in the vein of A Bug's Life or Monsters Inc., two films I've ever cared much for, rather than the kind of Pixar films I've loved in the past. In fact, in my lifetime, I have rarely been more skeptical of a Pixar film than I was of Hoppers. I especially felt this way because it references Avatar, a series I've always found rather soulless, even though it's visually stunning. Yet, Hoppers? This was the literal shiz: it blew my expectations out of the water, above the Wall-E spaceship, past Zorg's mothership, and through the alien council. In today's Reel Ranker review, I will be talking about why Hoppers is not only great—and not only one of Pixar's best animated films—but one of the best animated films of all-time.

Some of the scenes in this film are absurd haha.

I always start with the negatives in my reviews, but I can't think of a single negative about this film. Well, except not dropping a name card at the end of the film announcing a Hoppers 2 or a Jerry spinoff. Like Elemental and Elio before it, Hoppers is so much more than the marketing could ever hope to convey. This film was truly that phenomenal.

I've cried while watching many Pixar films, if not most of them. Yet, Ratatouille and Up may have made me cry the hardest to this day. Hoppers now holds the record for the Pixar film that made me cry the longest. If you think a film about a girl becoming an animatronic beaver can't be one of the most emotionally charged movies you've ever seen, you're wrong, as I was a few days ago.

For how simplistic this poster is, it's really cute and effective.

Pixar was able to craft a movie that is equally hilarious, charming, earnest, and heartfelt. I don't want to spoil the film, but let's just say the film flips the script in the last act, returning Mabel to human form. And her scenes with King George and Jerry and her grandma near the end all hit so ridiculously hard if you're a tender-hearted man like me.

Hoppers may be the funniest Pixar outing ever, perhaps second only to Inside Out 2. While Pixar movies have always had great jokes, Hoppers is on a whole other league that only Lance Slashblade can rival. While the humor of Hoppers could've missed a lot, like when some projects from Illumination and DreamWorks quip every few seconds, it never misses. While the trailer makes the humor look a little cringeworthy, within the film's context, almost every joke is laugh-out-loud funny. This film also has some rather dark jokes about death and other darker elements, but it executes them with ease and perfectly keeps with the film's fun tone.

This lizard was certainly a lot more popular than prominent.

Hoppers explores themes of forgiveness, environmentalism, and unity, and executes all of them with so much heart. It's able to make the villain, Jerry, go through a character arc to become one of my new favorite Pixar characters without him feeling like a sympathetic villain just for the sake of it, a common problem with modern big-studio cinema. Seldom do I see such an energetic, off-the-wall, over-the-top film show themes of forgiveness in such a beautiful, show-don't-tell modus operandi. There's a tear-jerking scene where a beaver literally puts its paw on a human. This scene, and many others in the film, pack so much punch without any words. There's a scene that hearkens back to the text-to-speech segment shown off in the trailers and reframes that silly sequence into something that will spray onion juice into your eyes. Most Pixar movies will have at least two scenes that make me tear up, but this movie, while maybe not as emotionally intense per scene, just has so many emotional scenes.

The animation here is one of Pixar's best performances. While many Pixar films find ways to make their style look different movie to movie, they still look largely the same. While Elemental is easily the prettiest and most distinct animation they've put out, I love that Hoppers made a pivot from the bean-faced, cutesy style to making some humans that actually look real. The character design is just as great as everything else.

Mabel and co. look so fantastic in this film.

The Reel Ranker Verdict

Reel or Unreel? - Reel
The Reel Ranker Score: 100%
Letter Score: S+
Star Ranking: 5 out of 5

Hoppers is one of Pixar's best films, as unassuming as it may seem. It's got every single element of an amazing film: it's emotional, entertaining, and engaging. This is a new bona fide classic animated film: there's not much you can do to make a film like this better, because it delivered its premise to perfection.

Interested in checking out my reviews for some other recent animated projects? Check them out below!