HOPPERS

The movie begins in little Mabel’s elementary school classroom, where Mabel’s classmates manhandle the class’s turtle before running out to recess. While the children are playing outside, Mabel puts the turtle into her backpack to release it in the wild. However, as she sneaks outside, she sees all the other class animals in their cages and hides them in her backpack too.

The janitor becomes suspicious and so do some teachers that are standing in the hallway. They try to grab Mabel. In the confusion, the animals escape Mabel’s backpack, and Mabel bites one teacher in the arm.

The next thing Mabel knows, her mother’s dropping Mabel off at her grandma’s house. She asks Mabel’s grandma to watch her while she returns to work.

At first, Mabel is too angry to speak with her grandma, but Grandma walks her to a nearby glade with a beautiful pond. They sit on a large rock on the bank of the pond, and Grandma tells Mabel to listen quietly, and she will hear nature, and it will bring her peace. Mabel does so and is astonished to hear all the sounds of the glade come alive. Through the years, Mabel and her grandma spent many hours sitting on that rock and admiring nature.

Cut to Mabel in college, years after her grandma has passed. Mabel’s enjoyment of the pond is under assault. That’s because Beaverton’s mayor, Jerry, is building a freeway beltway near the pond and doesn’t care that his construction has caused all the animals to flee. Mabel tries to get help saving the pond from her female science teacher, Dr. Sam, but she’s not interested.

One evening, Mabel’s watching what’s left of the pond, which has no water because the beavers have stopped damming the flowing river water that created the pond. A lone beaver starts exploring the pond’s muddy remnants. Mabel is hopeful that the beaver might build a dam and renew the pond, but it leaves and walks through the construction fence.

Mabel follows the beaver when she sees a mysterious van stop near the beaver. A person gets out and places the beaver in the van. Mabel desperately follows the van and is surprised to see it enter the college grounds. The beaver gets out of the van at a loading dock and enters a building. Mabel follows the beaver, which isn’t acting like an animal. In fact, it stands up and starts walking on its two hind legs.

Surprisingly, the beaver leads Mabel to an animal laboratory run by Dr. Sam. Mabel confronts the doctor and accused her of experimenting on animals. The truth is stranger than fiction, however. The beaver turns out to be a robot, and Dr. Sam is using a device like a beauty salon hair dryer to place her assistant’s mind inside the robot so that she can go out and communicate with animals.

Dr. Sam removes her assistant from the device, and the beaver robot stops moving. That’s when Mabel puts her own head into the device and activates the beaver robot. Now inside the robot, Mabel runs from Dr. Sam and the assistant. She makes it to the pond, but Dr. Sam sends her male assistant inside a bird robot. The robot swoops Mabel into the air, but she struggles with the flying robot, and it drops her into the deep forest.

The next morning, Mabel wakes up to find that she can hear exactly what all the animals are saying. However, she encounters a large bear that wants to eat her. The bear is perplexed about why Mabel refuses to be eaten. He tells her everyone knows “the pond rules” say, “When you have to eat, you eat.” He decides to take Mabel to the “king” of the mammals.

A wacky adventure ensues, with Mabel trying to rally the animals to stop Mayor Jerry’s beltway. Mabel discovers that Mayor Jerry’s assault on the animals is more nefarious than she thought. However, her plan to help the animals backfires, putting everyone’s life in danger, including all the people of Beaverton.

Beautifully animated, HOPPERS tells a delightful, wacky, hilarious story with fun twists and turns. Though it has some Romantic and environmentalist content, the movie ends up on strong morally uplifting notes.

For example, perhaps the strongest lesson in Hoppers is the mammal king’s insistence, which is repeated that “We’re all in this together.” Thus, despite the environmentalist content, eventually, humans decide to preserve the natural environment, and the animals decide to let humans have their space too. Also, the mammal king believes everyone is good inside, but Mabel disputes that. Thus, Mayor Jerry turns out to be even more nefarious than he thought at first.

However, the key to helping the animals is to convince Jerry that he’s wrong and have him repent. Thus, HOPPERS teaches the Christian value of repentance after recognizing truth. In addition, although the movie is pro-animal, the birds, insects, fish, reptiles, and amphibious creatures decide that, if they’re all going to survive, they must squish all the humans, starting with Mayor Jerry. However, Mabel and her new animal friends decide that’s awful. So, they plan to stop these creatures from hurting any humans, including Mayor Jerry. They strongly believe they should try to convince Jerry to repent instead. Finally, in the end, one of the creatures that wants to squish the humans turns out to be a power-mad villain who can’t be persuaded to turn away from his villainy. So, despite what the mammal king believes, the movie actually concludes that not everyone is good inside.

All in all, HOPPERS is a fun, delightful, family-friendly comic adventure. However, there are some scary moments along with lots of action. For example, there’s a friendly but scary female shark, some scary snakes and a scary robot with crazy eyes. MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger children.