This week sees the release of “Hoppers,” Pixar’s latest film and the company’s best movie since…the original 2015 “Inside Out,” probably? I reviewed the film, giving it a B+ , and wrote that one of its best attributes is that it’s the studio’s first film in years to feel like it’s coming from a very specific and unique point of view. Director Daniel Chong has been in the Pixar orbit for a while, getting his start as a storyboard artist on films like “Cars 2” and “Inside Out.”
But before “Hoppers,” he was best known for his 2015 Cartoon Network series “We Bare Bears,” a series with a lot of creative DNA that can clearly be seen in how “Hoppers” was conceptualized.
The story of an ecologist activist who puts her brain in a robot beaver body with the mission of infiltrating the animal kingdom, “Hoppers” sets itself apart from other animated movies about cute forest critters with its quirky, dry sense of humor and its commitment to showing the less-than-flattering sides of animal behavior with an obvious sense of affection. These are all traits found in “We Bare Bears,” and anyone charmed by “Hoppers” will probably find the show a sweet, enjoyable comfort watch that can appeal to adults as much as to its target audience of kids.
Currently streaming in its entirety on Hulu and Disney+, consisting of four seasons and a wrap-up TV movie, “We Bare Bears” is set around a mostly realistic facsimile of the San Francisco Bay Area. The main exception is that a few (but not all) animals can speak as they attempt to integrate into human society. The show follows three bears and adopted brothers in their awkward, frequently failed attempts to fit in with their neighbors. Roaming around the city stacked on top of each other (the show’s signature “Bear Stack”), the trio consists of the boisterous leader Grizz (Eric Edelstein), the anxious Panda (Bobby Moynihan, who appears in “Hoppers” as the character King George), and the laconic, stoic Ice (Demetri Martin). Every episode is an 11-minute vignette of one of their slice-of-life adventures, as they try to go viral online, open a food truck, and other harebrained schemes.
While the episodes are so short, “We Bare Bears” builds a surprisingly vivid world over its run, introducing a memorable supporting cast that includes a socially awkward bigfoot (Jason Lee) and a narcissistic, social media-famous koala (Patton Oswalt). But the focus remains squarely on the show’s trio, who are a sharply written and distinctive little family, one that sometimes gets on each other’s nerves but is also deeply and heartwarmingly bonded. The show’s simple, rotund art style makes the three bears adorable, but they’re also quirky and hilarious, and the show’s often at its best when it incorporates the same gently skewed look at their animalistic behaviors that made “Hoppers” such a success.
Take Season 1 highlight “Primal,” in which Grizz grows concerned that living among humans for so long has made the bears lose their survival instincts. To try to toughen his brothers up, he intentionally gets them lost in the forest to test their survival instincts, only for the excursion to become a complete disaster — the trio accidentally swallows ants, finds the cold completely miserable, and the experience eventually reverts Panda and Ice into aggressive savages. Other episodes, like “Hibernation,” where Grizz tries and fails at hiibernation after realizing he’s the only brother who can do it, get similar mileage out of the tension between the characters’ animal reality and their aspirations for a human existence.
Like “Hoppers,” which proves sweetly emotional without ever being too saccharine, the series also has an authentic heart that peeks out from time to time, especially in episodes that focus on how the bears met and became a family. One of the show’s best episodes, “Burrito,” is particularly skilled at this: for most of the runtime, it’s a silly story about Grizz growing unhealthily attached to a gigantic burrito he wins from an all-you-can-eat contest at a local Mexican place. In its last few minutes, though, the episode uses the story to unveil a bit of the character’s past in a way that’s deeply heartwarming and a little sad. It’s a great installment of TV that shows exactly what “We Bare Bears” does best, and what makes the show such a joyful little treat.
