Hoppers

Released March 6, 2026, Hoppers arrived as a film that no one quite knew what to make of from its premise — a college student transfers her consciousness into a robotic beaver in order to communicate with animals — and emerged as the kind of delightfully weird, genuinely emotional Pixar film that the studio's most devoted fans had been hoping for since its creative peak. Directed by Daniel Chong, the creator of the acclaimed Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears, Hoppers carries that show's characteristic warmth and deadpan absurdism into a feature-length adventure that manages to be simultaneously a coming-of-age story, an environmental comedy, and a surprisingly moving meditation on what it means to connect across difference. Piper Curda voices Mabel, the protagonist whose scientific ambition outpaces her social skills — a deeply relatable starting point executed with enormous comic specificity. Jon Hamm is a comedic revelation as Mayor Jerry Generazzo, a self-important small-town politician whose conflict with Mabel's animal-communication project drives the film's second act. And Meryl Streep, voicing the Insect Queen with imperious grandeur, provides the film's most unexpectedly hilarious performance — a late-film sequence involving her character and a fluorescent light fixture may be the single funniest thing Pixar has ever put on screen. Hoppers has earned 94% from Rotten Tomatoes critics — matching Project Hail Mary — and 93% from audiences, making it the second-highest rated film on this list by combined critical-audience measure. Its Metacritic score of 73 reflects a slight critical reservation about its plotting in the third act that most viewers won't notice or care about. With roughly $389 million worldwide as of late June 2026, it is a genuine commercial success and a worthy representative of what Pixar does when it's operating at full creative confidence.