The vibes were a bit off in my house, though. My older son might be having an issue with gluten and we're all a bit worried about it/him. "Hey, I want to go see a movie!" didn't seem like the right play.
So I scratched the Pixar itch with Hoppers, which is also just available to me in the past few days, having debuted on Disney+. (And I'm not totally sure that's the perfect usage of the word "proxy," but you can't beat the alliteration.)
Hoppers seemed to me to be emblematic of post-Pixar. And by that I'm speaking personally. It's post me caring about Pixar, at least potentially. It's post my kids caring about Pixar, definitely, although my younger son did see this with his aunt earlier this year, though I'm sure he would have skipped it if he weren't trying to do something nice for his aunt.
The basis for this judgment?
I guess because it involves primarily animals? That had something to do with it. Movies where animals communicate with each other don't seem as sophisticated as I want. I didn't care for The Wild Robot, even though others did, and I'm still processing what this means for my interest in animation on the whole.
Also for a long time I thought Hoppers was an Easter movie. It came out a few weeks before Easter, and the title made me think of what rabbits to, which is hop. (There's also an actual Easter movie called Hop.) Having seen the movie, I couldn't tell you if there is actually a single rabbit in Hoppers, so obviously I got that one wrong. However, even if I had been right, I'm not sure why being an Easter movie would lower Hoppers in my estimation, but it did.
I never saw a trailer for the movie, which I think might have excited me for it and might have gotten me over some of my Wild Robot worries, though it's hard to say. If I were to watch that trailer now, I'd have a whole different impression of what it portended for me, because I've already seen the movie, so the viewing itself was my first impression of the movie and I can't go back and have a different one.
Well, you might have figured out what I'm leading up to: I kind of loved this movie.
The poster you see above is a pretty mid encapsulation of what this movie has in store. Set against a blank yellow "studio" background, it gives an impression of shenanigans that are very character-based, possibly very silly, which would be the style for movies aimed at an even younger audience -- like a Minions movie. (Yes, there's another one of those coming out soon too.)
But this is a lush, verdant film with scenes of a glade that are so beautiful you want to eat them. While some animation studios seem to reach a certain level of sophistication and then level out, Pixar continues pushing its capabilities so that each new film feels like a step forward, and Hoppers is one of the best examples of that I've seen.
What's more, that animation style is a bit weird, and that is most assuredly a compliment. In a way that sometimes reminded me of how Turning Red tried to push the house style in the direction of anime, this too has a kooky perspective in which animals are made to look less "realistic" in certain moments and more expressionistic, like something you might see in an old Road Runner cartoon.
That decision totally works with the humor, which is also a bit weird. Some of the line deliveries here made me laugh out loud, which is not something I remember doing in a Pixar film for half a decade or longer. These animals, and indeed some human characters as well (the plot is Avatar, even though the movie itself funnily decries that it's not Avatar), have slightly oddball personalities, ones that a screenwriter (or screenwriters) had to specifically conceive in a manner that was outside the path of least resistance. There is thought put into these characters, even ones who have relatively small roles.
One of the best examples of this was the lizard voiced by Tom Law. I don't remember this lizard doing much more than chiming in as a fifth voice in any scene, but every time he did it made me laugh. There's this one scene I will take with me that occurs in a car, where the beavers and other animals are trying to communicate with a human by using emojis on a phone and text-to-type. The lizard says, in a sort of formal and proud voice, "I too have something to say," and then jumps down and starts mashing lizard emojis on the phone.
Maybe you have to see it to get it. And you definitely, definitely should.
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