'Hoppers': fun with a message

  Mabel's journey isn't exactly standard issue -- at least not for a 19-year-old college student.

    During the course of Pixar's animated feature, Hoppers, Mabel (Piper Curda) projects herself into an artificially created creature that looks exactly like a beaver, so much so that she fools real beavers. 

   Mabel has a cause, but don't prep for a lecture; Mabel's story delivers an environmentally oriented message without short-changing fun.

 A resident of the small town of Beaverton, Mabel is a staunch environmentalist who balks when the town's mayor (Jon Hamm) destroys  the natural habitat where beavers and other creatures mingle. 

  A nearly completed thruway threatens her beloved glade. 

  Mabel's appreciation for nature began with her grandmother (Karen Huie). Grandma told Mabel that nature provides sanctuary and balance. Sitting quietly in the glade, Mabel could feel as if she belonged to something bigger than herself, and all would be well.

   As is often the case with animated features, the supporting characters add color and, in this case, a bit of human and creature chaos. Kathy Najimy voices Dr. Sam, the scientist who has invented the machine that transfers human brains into animal droids. The machine allows Mabel to  become a trusted advisor to King George (Bobby Moynihan), a beaver who has learned the art of accommodation with human ambitions. A major supporter of the Pond Rules that govern the animals, George needs to have his rebellious spark reignited.

   Meryl Streep provides the voice for Insect Queen, an imperious character that's more interested in fighting than persuasion. 

  A diverse array of creatures enters without too much concern for verisimilitude, particularly in the movie’s third act. Director Daniel Chong even finds a way to add a giant shark named Diane (Vanessa Bayer) to the mix.

   Toward the end, the movie probably overindulges its action inclinations, but not enough to spoil a mostly enjoyable hunk of animation. 

    What's missing? Some of the pop-cultural sizzle that the best Pixar features have captured. Still, Hoppers entertains while delivering a hopeful message that suggests we do better when we work together.

   I know that feels like a greeting card bromide, but, hey, we are talking an animated feature that may not be fully grown up, even if it avoids being infantile.

   For the record: The movie acknowledges that when nature functions properly, some of its characters might have to feed on their companions. A last-minute rescue saves Loaf, a beaver voiced by Eduardo Franco, from Ellen, a mostly friendly bear (Melissa Villasenor).

    Not to worry. Life in the glade may have its dangers, but they beat the disasters represented by thoughtless human intrusions.

More body swaps in a lesser movie

    During the first 15 minutes of Freakier Friday, a sequel to the popular 2003 movie, a food fight disrupts a high school bake sale. As the sloppy mayhem unfolded, I surrendered any hope that this broadly played cinematic reunion tour for Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan would bubble with Wildean wit.

  Working from a screenplay credited to a trio of writers, director Nisha Ganatra doubles the number of characters involved in body swaps from two to four, but that that doesn't make her movie any better than its predecessor. Sadly it's probably not as good.

  This time, the body-swapping adventures of Curtis and Lohan are joined by Julia Butters, as the daughter of Lohan's now-grown Anna, and Sophie Hammons, as Lily, a teenager who'll be blended into a new family should Anna go through with her plan to marry Lily's father, a widowed British restaurateur played by Manny Jacinto.

  Ganatra keeps things peppy as she builds toward the inevitable body swaps, this time resulting from the unwanted help of a faux psychic (Vanessa Bayer). 

   The idea behind the plot goes something like this: Both teenagers (Butters and Hammons) despise one another and have no desire to become stepsisters. Once they find themselves in different bodies, they follow a sitcom playbook, scheming to derail Anna and Eric's impending wedding. 

    Lohan and Butters do well, with Curtis' broader performance adding dashes of slapstick.  Hammons ably fulfills her obligations as a conceited London-raised teenager who hasn't gotten over the death of her mother. Lohan's Anna, by the way, opted for single motherhood long before the story began.

    All of this rattles on for one hour and 51 minutes while the characters learn how to resolve their problems.

    Look, because there's no suspense about how the movie will end, I don't consider it a spoiler to tell you that a truly freaky movie would have put Butters' 15-year-old Harper in her 36-year-old mother's body indefinitely, skipping the end of adolescence for the entrapments of middle age. 

   Too freaky? I suppose so.

   The movie has other things in mind as it works to generate  feel-good spirit, culminating with a showy musical production number involving Lohan, Butters, and a singer (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) Anna manages. Anna, we learn, became a talent agent after abandoning performing ambitions she displayed in the earlier movie, partly to concentrate on being a mom.

     Perhaps to provide connection points for those who loved the 2003 movie, the filmmakers contrive small roles for additional returnees, notably Stephen Tobolowsky, as an aging teacher, Chad Michael Murray, as Anna's old high school flame, and Mark Harmon, as Tess's husband.

    The movie's end credits feature outtakes that suggest the movie was fun to make. The performances capture some of that giddy flavor, but Freakier Friday wraps its family-oriented sentiments in a package that 22 years of aging hasn't done much to improve.*

    *For the record, I haven't seen the 1976 version of Freaky Friday that starred Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris.