While i skip most of Pixar’s (and Disney’s for that matter) output nowadays, i decided to give Jumpers a try even if the premise didn’t quite excite me.
The premise sees Mable, a young girl that loves animals and grew attached to a pond her grandma used to take her and relax with the sound of nature, trying to fight a local politician that is banking its campaign on expanding the highway by constructing over that very pond.
Much to Mable’s dismay, he can because the pond is actually devoid of animal life, but she finds out bringing in a beaver will make the other animals follow suite, and trying to do so, she discovers a secret university project where they use advanced robot animals and project their mind into these to infiltrate and monitor the fauna better.
She then forcefully “mind jacks” into the robot beaver using the device in an effort to make the animals swarm the pond and so demonstrate they can’t actually build over that habitat….
Gotta say, maybe Pixar isn’t completely washed up, because Jumpers is actually quite good.
First, it doesn’t take nowhere as long as expected for Mable to get into the “not Avatar” device and start journeying into the animal’s world, there is enough time spent to characterize Mable herself as a likeable young activist moved by actual love and respect for the animals, maybe a bit too much to understand some consequences, but well meaning, plus the animal world itself and its rules are actually more interesting than one would expect, harboring some genuinely surprising turns.
It’s an ecological fable that’s actually is more effective because it isn’t preachy, there are some fun designs and very cute animation quirks like the switching from realistic and “talking animals” vision of the events.
Final Verdict: Expresso
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