Not to be confused with Jodie Foster’s Beaver, this Pixar flick sees nature-loving Mabel (Piper Curda) stumble into the “Hoppers” programme, where a team of benevolent scientists hook themselves up to robotic animals so they can interact with local wildlife. They should have called it Avotter.

While Pixar has form in the animal kingdom (e.g. A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo), Hoppers is its most ecologically minded movie to date, which is nice as long as you don’t think too hard about the environmental impact of Disney’s theme parks and the amount of plastic toys it produces. It is however a much needed message in the current political climate, and after the extended therapy sessions of Inside Out and Soul, a welcome return to the simpler kid-friendly storytelling the studio does best.

The story is essentially Pom Poko meets Avatar, as Mabel tries to stop the Mayor (Jon Hamm) from building a highway through the glade behind her grandmother’s house, in order to save “up to four minutes” on journey times. After discovering that her biology professor (Kathy Najimy) has created this Hopper technology, she disguises herself as a beaver and enlists the help of the animals to save the glade.

The film never really explains why her teachers are building mind-operated robot creatures, but it is no less believable than half the things AI and robotics companies are actually doing. The bigger problem is the voice cast who make the characters all sound similar, which seems a missed opportunity for some comedic biodiversity.

At its best though the creature feature is warmly funny and dam cute, with self-referential nods to The Lion King and Up, and some adorable characters, including dopey beaver Loaf (Eduardo Franco) and hungry yet polite bear Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor). It also avoids having that one annoying character Pixar usually loves to include, because if any of the animals were as irritating as Bing Bong in Inside Out or Forky in Toy Story 4, the crowd would be mounting the steamrollers themselves.

Hoppers stands out from the recent Pixar pack by having personality and an admirable point of view, and while it’s no Toy Story, at least it’s not Toy Story 5.