Pankaj Kapur in ‘Jab Khuli Kitaab’
| Photo Credit: ZEE5

In cinema logic, sharks, especially great whites, make excellent characters in animation. From Bruce in Finding Nemo to Mr Shark, the master of disguise in The Bad Guys, these apex predators turn their great gummy mouths with many pointy teeth into jolly good fellows.

In Hoppers, the 30^th animation film from Pixar, there is a great white called Diane (Vanessa Bayer), who, despite being a scary assassin, has such sweet, shining eyes and a warm smile that one cannot help but grinning back.

We first meet Mabel (Piper Curda) as a little girl trying to set all the animals in school free and being sent home for her pains (and also because she bites one of the teachers trying to stop her). Her busy mother drops Mabel with her grandmother (Karen Huie) who shows her the peace and quiet that can be hers if she only stops to listen.

The glade where grandmother Tanaka teaches her this valuable life lesson becomes a special place for Mabel. Years later, after her grandmother has passed, 19-year-old Mabel is a college student and still fighting for animal rights.

Matters come to a head when the mayor of Beaverton, Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) plans to blow up the glade to build a freeway. Mabel tries to get signatures from the citizenry to stop the freeway plans, but that comes to naught as people quickly turn away from the zealous Mabel.

Frustrated, with no recourse in sight, Mabel chances upon a beaver making its way to her university’s biology lab. First worried that her biology professor Sam (Kathy Najimy) is doing some unspeakable animal experiments, Mabel is nonplussed to find that Sam, with her colleague Nisha (Aparna Nancherla) and graduate student Conner (Sam Richardson), have developed a revolutionary technology to transfer human consciousness to robot animal.

Mabel uploads her consciousness into a robot beaver and sets off to thwart the mayor. Seeing the world from the animals’ perspective gives Mabel a unique point of view. Hoppers has jokes, chases, largeness of heart and solid science — not consciousness-switching with robot animals or flying shark assassins but the fact that beavers are the environmental engineers of the natural world.

The voice cast is wonderful, from Bobby Moynihan as the beaver king, George to Dave Franco as Titus, the prickly butterfly who becomes the insect king after Mabel accidentally kills his mum — the Insect Queen, played with terrifying grandeur by Meryl Streep.

The animals are delightfully delineated, from the spaced-out beaver, Loaf (Eduardo Franco) to Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor) the grumpy bear. The animation is lovely, with each of the animal and human characteristics clearly outlined. From the mayor’s grasping to Sam’s brilliance, Mabel’s fervour to Loaf’s stillness, and the different animal monarchs’ regality, it is all given marvellous life.

ALSO READ: ‘The Bride!’ movie review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s glam-goth Frankenstein can’t hold its stitches

The “pond rules” ensure that the animals are not completely anthropomorphised — a sticky point in animation films where carnivores and herbivores hang together without even a sneaky licking of lips!

Smart, funny, exciting, honest, and touching, Hoppers is the kind of film you can watch with the bachcha party and elders alike, with a happy grin. And then there is Diane of the red, red lips and sparkly white rotating teeth — yes, Hoppers boasts that level of detailing.

Hoppers is currently running in theatres

Published – March 06, 2026 07:08 pm IST

The satirical romp Josie and the Pussycats (2001) is a fun movie. But is it a great rock ‘n’ roll movie?
Eh, not so fast on that second one. Welcome back to Glide’s quest for what makes a good rock ‘n’ roll movie. Last month, we looked at Almost Famous, a great launching pad because it gets so much right. And every first Friday, we’ll take another look at a rock ‘n’ movie and ask what it means in the larger pantheon. This month, the Glide’s screening room brings you Josie and the Pussycahttps://glidemagazine.com/322100/almost-perfect-why-almost-famous-sets-the-gold-standard-for-rock-movies/ts. The film is a live-action take on the classic comic-and-cartoon property of a sugary, all-girl rock trio that exists in the world of Riverdale, a.k.a. fictional home of the iconic Archie Andrews.

But this Josie has next to nothing to do with Riverdale and is instead a satire of consumerism and ’00s boy bands. A worthy target, and a topic that has stayed worthy in the quarter-century since Josie dropped. The film was not a hit, but it has become something of a cult classic (like many movies featured in this series).

The plot is fairly simple. Wyatt Frame, an evil corporate type, is making piles of money off boy band Du Jour. They start to wise up to his evil scheme and have to be… taken care of. Frame needs a new group to front his plot, which revolves around mind control to push consumer culture. Enter Josie and the Pussycats, who are about to have a whirlwind ride to the top. And along the way, foil a plot with tentacles so far-reaching they have ensnared… Carson Daly?

Josie is a fun, clever movie, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to say about real rock ‘n’ roll, unless you want to simply accept a perspective that it’s just another cynical consumer-driven product. Even that is an argument that can be made, as long as you’re willing to ignore underground and indie scenes and passionate artists making amazing music.

And it is true that this is a theme of Josie. The band triumphs at the end via their authentic music. But it somehow doesn’t feel authentic, which makes it something of a hollow victory. Let’s consider the criteria already established for a good rock ‘n’ roll movie, and how Josie delivers on that front. The first is in the characters department. The film dodges the previously established Buckethead Paradox, which states that “The real-life rock stars are so much larger than life that you can’t make up credible fictional versions. There is no way someone like Buckethead would come out of a writer’s room and make it to a screen.”

For better or worse, Josie dodges the Paradox by essentially embracing it. The characters themselves are cartoons, and there’s no effort at realism. Given that intent is a huge part of art, it seems unfair to call these characters “cartoons” as a criticism, and it should probably be a compliment. At the same time, they aren’t particularly memorable, which is not a great quality.

And—as a bonus—Tara Reid is perfectly cast as drummer Melody Valentine. Josie was a few years after her turn in Around the Fire (1998), an unintentionally hilarious classic that plays like a jam band afterschool special from the producers of Reefer Madness (look for this amazing film in an upcoming piece).
The acting in general is good, with Rachel Leigh Cook as Josie McCoy and Rosario Dawson as bassist Valerie Brown rounding out the band. And Alan Cumming almost steals the show as sleazy corporate weasel Wyatt Frame.

The character of Wyatt is the film’s funniest riff on a rock ‘n’ roll archetype: the sleazy, corporate manager accompanied by assorted crooked accountants. From Colonel Tom Parker to Albert Grossman to The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It’s all about the benjamins. Which is where the music comes in. If the music is good, that’s what makes it worth it. And Josie’s music has aged particularly well. It’s well-recorded, produced and executed. The songs are particularly catchy. The vocals are by Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo. Much of the soundtrack sounds like a lost album from The Muffs, and one wonders why Kim Shattuck wasn’t involved.

There’s an argument that power pop was never supposed to be dangerous, and that the Muffs aren’t dangerous either. Fair on the surface, but they played real punk clubs and came from a real scene. There’s not even a hint of that in Josie. So an argument that they play pop punk (which they kinda do) is really lacking the punk part.
And it was produced by Babyface, of all people. While that doesn’t seem like it should lead to great rock ‘n’ roll, sometimes preconceptions are wrong.

That said, this is a very commercial product and sound—as catchy as it is—so maybe it’s not a misconception. Maybe the right question to ask is whether it’s all too perfect? And that’s what gives this ostensibly rock ‘n’ film a smoothed-down edge? After all, the basic ingredients are there. But part of what makes good rock good is that it feels actually dangerous. Maybe there are some actual subversive messages, or a genuine counterculture scene. And Josie simply isn’t that film. The soundtrack is fondly remembered enough that Hanley appeared live and performed the songs at a screening in 2017. That appearance also included the film’s stars Cook, Dawson and Reid.

It’s worth noting that while Cook and company obviously lip sync to the songs in the film, their performances are credible. They went through instrument boot camp, so they pull off the parts.

In the end, the film is primarily a satire of consumer culture. And even more strangely, is loaded with actual product placement. Clearly, the joke was intended to “hit harder” with real products, but having Target in the film constantly makes it feel like more of what it is parodying than a parody. Where’s the joke if the viewer actually pushes to shop at Target while watching the film? And if the filmmakers actually took money (which they almost certainly did)?

And perhaps that is the lesson for this month: a great rock ‘n’ roll movie needs to have something to say about the larger meaning or culture of the music. And while Josie may have a lot to say about culture in general, and it may say it in a fun and likeable way, it’s just not very rock ‘n’ roll. There’s no grit. Now, does it have some things to say about being in a band? Yes, though they are arguably true of most collaborations.

If someone in a hundred years wanted to understand early 21st century rock, Josie and the Pussycats is a bad choice. It doesn’t show the sweat of a performance or the smell of beer. But it’s a great choice for anyone looking for a light-hearted, fun watch with a great soundtrack. We could all use some sugar in our lives these days.
Join us again next month, when we’ll look at one of the inspirations for Josie, A Hard Day’s Night, the legendary first film from The Beatles