Hoppers First Reviews: Pixar’s Best Film in Years
Critics say it's a fresh, energetic, hilarious, and gleefully bonkers offering that feels like classic Pixar in the best ways.
Pixar’s latest animated feature, Hoppers, hits theaters this Friday, and the first reviews are now online and mostly very positive. Directed by longtime Pixar contributor Daniel Chong, who also created the series We Bare Bears, the movie follows a human girl who infiltrates the animal world by way of a robotic beaver avatar. Fans of Pixar can expect great animation, another clever script, and lots of humor — but it’s neither the best nor the worst release from the studio.
Here’s what critics are saying about Hoppers:
Has Pixar made another masterpiece?
It’s top-drawer Pixar, a reminder that when this studio is firing on all cylinders, it will take you places you’ve never imagined.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
Pixar returns to vintage form with Hoppers.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
After 30 years and 30 films, Pixar still hasn’t managed to lose its magic.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
Hoppers is such a funny, clever, kind, playfully dark, and wonderfully weird film.
— William Bibbiani, TheWrap
This messy, confused film is a clear illustration of Pixar’s decline from its high-concept glory days.
— Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
How does it compare to other Pixar movies?
Pixar’s freshest, funniest movie in years… its best new release in a solid decade.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
It’s the best Pixar movie since Coco.
— William Bibbiani, TheWrap
Hoppers just might be Pixar’s best original film since 2020’s Soul.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
It’s also one of Pixar’s most manic works to date.
— Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
Will fans of We Bare Bears like it?
This will absolutely be a delight for We Bare Bears fans, as the vibe and animation style often can’t help but remind one of Chong’s show.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
Much of that show’s DNA has carried over to Chong’s feature.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
Is Hoppers really Pixar’s take on Avatar?
Pitting industrial expansion against the natural ecosystems it threatens to displace, the film is a riff on Avatar by way of Pom Poko.
— Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
Hoppers isn’t just James Cameron’s Avatar if it had feelings, it’s also James Cameron’s Avatar if it was good.
— William Bibbiani, TheWrap
Does it offer any surprises along the way?
Hoppers escalates quickly, in imaginative directions. It embraces the wonder of the premise.
— William Bibbiani, TheWrap
Hoppers never stops surprising you in rudely antic ways, and that’s the essence of its delight.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
This is not a movie that feels fine-tuned to death in studio meetings. There’s a crazy, almost anarchic narrative logic that keeps it zigging and zagging unpredictably.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
How is the script overall?
Hoppers concocts wild new ways to break its story open, utilizing its sci-fi technology in novel ways and taking advantage of its cartoony style to get weird with the plot points.
— William Bibbiani, TheWrap
What places Hoppers in the first rank of Pixar movies is that the story, while insane enough to begin with, keeps twisting and turning with let’s-try-it-on surrealist nonchalance.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
It shouldn’t all hang together as well as it does, but the movie’s freewheeling plotting is exhilarating.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
Chong and Jesse Andrews’s script is hectic, laying on chatty world-building that only becomes less coherent the more of it there is.
— Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
Does it have a good message?
It teaches kids to respect and understand nature, get involved in the community, and protect the vulnerable, even if that means an oily politician.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
Its timely theme is that the only path to salvation is for everyone to work with everyone else, and while that may sound like a “Kumbaya” message, the movie is structured, in the end, as an intricate roller-coaster of togetherness.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
The moral it eventually draws from the human vs. nature debate… isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s poignant all the same.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
Is it funny?
There’s a display of mammal-on-insect violence so abrupt and visceral that it’s both a little horrifying and also maybe the single funniest scene Pixar has ever animated.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
This is, without a doubt, one of the funniest films Pixar has made yet.
— Ross Bonaime, Collider
Will adults find anything to enjoy?
It will thrill the core audience of kids while keeping the grown-ups entertained.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
The film’s hour and 45 minutes of sustained color, noise, and low-hanging jokes about animals behaving like people aren’t the worst time [the] accompanying adults could have at the theater.
— Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
Do any of the voice actors steal the movie?
Bobby Moynihan… His performance here stands out from the pack.
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
Jon Hamm might be the standout, playing a slick and punchable politician who steadily unspools into a nervous wreck as the wildlife he’s attempting to displace start pursuing him.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
How is the animation?
Pixar’s animation style, which has veered toward the gorgeous but generic in recent years, gets a refresh here.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
The character designs are delightful, the physicality of the animals a constant source of amusement, and the lush green backgrounds of the woodsy setting make Hoppers a treat for the eyes.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
Pixar, the top 3D animation studio in the world, must simultaneously show off its technological advancements in texture and lighting, leading to the uncanny image of broadly caricatured cartoon animals and people with lifelike fur and flesh, like an antique doll with detailed skin—too real to be an evocation, too crude an abstraction to seem real.
— Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine
Does it have any problems?
If there’s a chief flaw to Hoppers, it’s that it has so much plot for its 100-minute running time that you wish it could settle down in one place for longer.
— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire
Should Pixar be making more films like this?
We need more films like it. Not just great Pixar movies, but great Pixar movies that playfully trash what Disney is doing elsewhere.
— William Bibbiani, TheWrap
Hoppers opens in theaters on March 6, 2026.
