This month’s film review from Fr Peter Malone MSC is available to view these Easter school holidays at Palace Cinema Balwyn.
Hoppers is a Pixar entertainment. Audience expectations are usually high with the announcement from Pixar, and Hoppers open to strong box office, audience enjoyment and critical praise.
As with many Pixar films, there are serious themes. The tone is set with the introduction of Mabel at school, upset at student pranks leaving a turtle on its back, her stealing all the animals to free them but caught, sent home, her mother leaving her with her kindly grandmother who sits with her on a rock by a lake, contemplating, smiling, gradually hearing the myriad sounds of animals, birds, insects. So, we begin with a conservation frame of mind.
Then, Mabel is 18, supposed to be studying at college, but stridently campaigning for animals and, especially, against the Mayor, Jerry, who is planning to destroy the animal habitat that she loves and build a Beltway. So, we are invited to have an anti-business-development frame of mind.
But, Hoppers is much more complex than this confrontation. The nice Dr Sam at college is developing all kinds of technology – and Mabel is able to transfer her mind and voice to a mechanical recreation of a Beaver. (Well, we are in an age of AI development!).
We spend a lot of time with this mechanical Mabel with the animals, especially beaver King George, a leader, and gradually meeting a whole range of animals, who have been banished, driven away by Jerry’s sound waves in the trees, but with Mabel, eliminating the repellent sound, they are able to come back. We are on side.
And, of course, we are against Jerry, absolutely smug, blowing up the habitat, clashing with Mabel. But, the animals fight back against Jerry. Even a large shark leaps out of the water onto his car to get rid of him!
The voice talent in the film is quite extensive. Piper Curda voices Mabel, Bobby Moynihan King George. But, in the supporting voices, we have Jon Hamm as Jerry, Kathy Najimi as Dr Sam, Dave Franco as the Insect King and, of all voices, Meryl Streep as the Insect Queen.
And, will it be a happy ending! Of course, but not before having to sort out Mabel’s deception of the animals, reconciliation, the hounding of Jerry and his conversion, and the message, important for audiences but, especially, younger audiences with social concern, progress is made not by confrontation but by dialogue and collaboration. Progress can win – but nature must also win.
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