Disney’s latest collaboration with Pixar does not feel much like anything the two studios have ever offered us — but after a century of near monolithic myth-building, that’s more than fine with me. Granted, Hoppers really just trades one outdated house style for another, slightly less dated one, tapping We Bare Bears creator Daniel Chong to project his own brand of noodle-y, Millennial verve onto Disney’s family-friendly fare.
A less charitable reading might liken the film to another take on the derided “CalArts Style,” which effectively began with Disney’s Golden Age before Cartoon Network made the trend its own. There’s something to that, as the human characters in Hoppers could have easily wandered off a Steven Universe storyboard, while the animals they’ve dedicated their lives to studying are just as smooth and bean-shaped as Chong’s three bears. Chong himself is one of Pixar’s native sons, but it’s hard to take umbrage with any repetition once Hoppers goes so delightfully off-the-rails otherwise.
