Pixar delivers with sweet, action-packed 'Hoppers'

“Hoppers” might be built with familiar parts, but Pixar’s latest isn’t trying to hide its various influences.

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'Hoppers' is a buoyant, freewheeling adventure about a spirited 19-year-old environmental activist, Mabel, who infiltrates the animal world in the body a robotic beaver wears its references for all to see. As a beaver, Mabel forms a friendship with King George, an optimistic, '80s-music-loving beaver who oversees a superdam for all the displaced wildlife.

Instead, this buoyant, freewheeling adventure about a spirited 19-year-old environmental activist who infiltrates the animal world in the body a robotic beaver wears its references for all to see. Sometimes it’s with a wink; Sometimes it’s more overt, like Kathy Najimy’s flustered scientist shouting, “This is nothing like ‘Avatar!’”

Of course, “Hoppers,” directed by Daniel Chong, is a little like “Avatar,” but who can blame her for being defensive? She’s figured out how to transport human consciousness into a robotic animal that can not only pass as a real one — in this case a beaver — but communicate with all varieties of mammals, insects and amphibians, too. Is it also a “Simpsons already did it” reference? That might be getting a little too meta, but the point is “Hoppers” is having fun with its own chaos.