#pixar-animation

#pixar-animation

After its $45.3 million debut, The Walt Disney Co.'s 'Hoppers' release dipped a modest 37% in its follow-up weekend, a promising sign for an animated movie hoping to have strong legs through March. The Pixar original, about a young woman who transforms into the body of a beaver to help defend a pond from development, is hoping to keep attracting audiences with good reviews (94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and strong audience scores (an 'A' CinemaScore).

Nineteen-year-old Mabel Tanaka has always used nature as a means of calming her volatile emotions, decompressing in the silence of the placid pond near her house with her beloved grandmother by her side. But as Mabel grows from a sullen teen to a young adult, her coping mechanisms fall away one by one. Her parents move away, her grandmother dies, and the pond, the last stable place in her life, is deserted by the wildlife that once gave her so much comfort, and scheduled to be paved over for a new highway.

Devo was always about humans being the one species out of touch with nature and the planet. I think you get a good representation of that idea without being shouted at in 'Hoppers,' which presents an exciting action tale about animals trying to protect their habitat from an unscrupulous developer while conveying important messages about ecological balance.