Movie Reviews
COUNTRY ROADS CHRISTMAS Review
COUNTRY ROADS CHRISTMAS is an entertaining movie that captures the spirit of Christmas. The artistic quality suffers sometimes from an unconvincing set, but the movie is both entertaining and touching. COUNTRY ROADS CHRISTMAS promotes strong Christian, biblical values such as repentance, forgiveness, family, and celebrating Christmas and the Birth of Christ together. Harris learns what it means to be a good and loving father and husband. He also realizes that it’s not good for a man to be alone, even if being a family man doesn’t match the image of a grizzled cowboy.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Very strong Christian, biblical, moral worldview stresses repentance, forgiveness, redemption, and the importance of family, a man who has wronged his wife and daughter for many years comes to see that what he did was wrong and works to rebuild their trust, and reconciliation eventually occurs and the family is rebuilt, plus characters sing multiple faith-based Christmas carols, such as “Joy to the World,” “O Holy Night” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”;
Foul Language:
No obscenities or profanities;
Violence:
No violence;
Nudity:
No nudity;
Alcohol Use:
One scene with social drinking;
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
No smoking or drugs; and
Miscellaneous Immorality:
Dysfunctional family with a man pretending to have cheated on his wife to push her away and isolate himself from his family, because he doesn’t think he’s good enough for them, but he eventually realizes that what he did was wrong, and he seeks reconciliation and forgiveness.
COUNTRY ROADS CHRISTMAS is a 2022 Christmas family drama that’s now being run on UPtv. It follows the reconciliation journey of a famous country singer, Harris, who works to reconcile with his family after abandoning them for years and believing they both would be happier and better off without him. The journey to forgiveness, however, isn’t so easy. His wife and his daughter are not quick to trust him after so many years of hurt. Instead, Harris has to prove to them that his heart has changed. At the same time, he realizes that even grizzled cowboys need a family.
Harris’s reconciliation with his daughter, Skye, begins when she’s hired as his tour manager for his Christmas tour after getting fired from her previous job at a competing record label. Skye and Harris are both hesitant to have her join the tour, but Harris’s manager, Ryan, convinces them it’s a good idea. Ryan, who was serving as Harris’s interim tour manager, begins teaching Skye the ropes so she can take over the position in the new year.
Despite the history of hurt between Harris and Skye, the tour runs pretty smoothly until Skye confronts her dad about abandoning their family. When he doesn’t give her a response, she wants to quit her position and leave the tour. Ryan, however, comes to the rescue and serves as a peacemaker, keeping both Harris and Skye happy.
As the tour continues, Skye learns that her father has sold his house and is now living on the tour bus year-round, a decision makes her extremely angry. Skye is mad both at her dad for his decision and at Ryan for allowing her dad to make that decision. However, she invites them to Christmas at her mom, Meg’s, house so her father can have a real home for the holidays. Skye doesn’t expect her father to accept her offer, because he’s been skipping out on Christmas for years. However, he shows up for Christmas, showing that his heart toward his family has begun to change.
When he arrives at Meg’s house, Harris asks his daughter for forgiveness for all the times he abandoned her, explaining that he believed she would be better off without him. Skye accepts the apology, though her heart is still hardened toward her father. Later, Harris apologizes to his wife for the same reason and can’t believe she still loves him after all this time.
Shortly after Christmas, Harris returns to his tour, however, he and Meg go out on the bus, leaving Skye and Ryan stranded at Meg’s house. Skye has been angry with Ryan the whole time because she doesn’t believe he’s been taking good care of her father. Over time, however, her heart begins to soften as she hears just how much Ryan has done for her father Harris.
Even before hearing about Ryan’s kindness to her father, Skye had developed feelings for Ryan. Once she realized just how much he cares, Skye fully falls for him. Lucky for her, Ryan falls for Skye too and romance blossoms.
However, can Skye fully reconcile with her father. Also, will her parents get back together?
COUNTRY ROADS CHRISTMAS is an entertaining movie that captures the spirit of Christmas by teaching about the importance of family, redemption and forgiveness. Also, the movie features multiple faith-based songs, including “O Holy Night” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The artistic quality suffers sometimes from an unconvincing set, but the movie is both entertaining and touching. Furthermore, there is no foul language, violence, and only an extremely brief scene of social drinking, along with positive portrayals of romantic relationships. Thus, the movie is suitable for all audiences.
“So it’s like Avatar?” one character quips in Disney and Pixar’s “Hoppers,” bluntly translating the film’s high-concept premise for the sugar-fueled kids in the audience. And yes, the comparison is apt. The story follows a nature-obsessed teenage girl who manages to quite literally “hop” her consciousness into the body of a robotic beaver in order to spark an animal rebellion against a greedy mayor determined to bulldoze their forest for a freeway.
It’s a clever hook. The kind of big, elastic idea Pixar used to make look effortless. “Hoppers” does not reach the rarified air of “Up,” “Wall-E,” or “Inside Out,” but after a stretch of uneven originals like “Turning Red” and “Luca,” and outright misfires such as “Elemental” and “Elio,” this feels like a genuine course correction. The environmental messaging is clear without being preachy, the animals are irresistibly anthropomorphized, and the studio’s once-signature emotional sincerity is back in sturdy form.
Pixar can afford to gamble on originals when it has a guaranteed cash cow like this summer’s “Toy Story 5” waiting in the wings, but “Hoppers” earns its place in the catalogue. Director Daniel Chong crafts a warm, heartfelt film that occasionally strains under the weight of its own ambition, yet remains grounded by character and theme. Its meditation on conservation and animal displacement feels timely in a way that never tips into after-school-special territory.
We meet Mabel, voiced with bright conviction by Piper Curda, as a child liberating her classroom pets and returning them to the wild. Her moral compass is shaped by her grandmother, voiced by Karen Huie, who imparts wisdom about nature’s sanctity. True to both Pixar tradition and the broader Disney playbook, this beacon of guidance does not survive past the opening act. Loss, after all, is Pixar’s favorite inciting incident.
Years later, Mabel is still fighting the good fight, squaring off against the smarmy Mayor Jerry, voiced with slick menace by Jon Hamm. He plans to flatten the glade where Mabel and her grandmother once found solace. Mabel’s resistance feels noble but futile. The animals have already mysteriously vanished, the machinery is coming, and her last-ditch plan involves luring a beaver back to the abandoned forest in hopes of jumpstarting the ecosystem.
That’s when the film gleefully pivots into mad-scientist territory. At Beaverton University, Mabel discovers her professor, voiced by Kathy Najimy, has developed a device that can project human consciousness into synthetic animals. The process, dubbed “hopping,” allows Mabel to inhabit a robotic beaver and infiltrate the forest from within. It’s an inspired escalation that keeps the film buoyant even when the plotting grows predictable.
Her new posse includes King George, a lovably beaver voiced by Bobby Moynihan with distinct Bing Bong energy; a sharp-tongued bear voiced by Melissa Villaseñor; a regal bird king voiced by the late Isiah Whitlock Jr.; and a fish queen voiced by Ego Nwodim. As is often the case with Pixar, even in its lesser efforts, the world-building is meticulous. The animal hierarchy, complete with titles like “paw of the king,” is layered with jokes that play for kids while slyly winking at adults.
The plot ultimately follows a familiar template. Scrappy underdog rallies community. Corporate villain twirls metaphorical mustache. Emotional third-act sacrifice looms. At times, you can feel the machinery working a little too cleanly. Pixar, and Disney at large, has grown increasingly reliant on sequels and established IP, and “Hoppers” does not radically reinvent the wheel. In an animated landscape where films like “K-Pop: Demon Hunters,” “Across the Spider-Verse,” and “Goat” are pushing stylistic and narrative boundaries, being safe and sturdy may not always be enough.
And yet, there is something refreshing about a Pixar original that remembers how to tug at the heart without squeezing it dry. “Hoppers” is playful, peppered with cheeky needle drops, and builds to a sweet emotional catharsis that may or may not have left this critic a little misty-eyed. It feels earnest and engaged.
“Hoppers” may not be top-tier Pixar. But it is a welcome return to form, a reminder that the studio still knows how to marry big ideas with a bigger heart.
HOPPERS opens in theaters Friday, March 6th.
Just when you think Pixar’s petting-zoo cute new movie “Hoppers” is flagrantly ripping off James Cameron, the characters come clean.
movie review
HOPPERS
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG (action/peril, some scary images and mild language). In theaters March 6.
“You guys, this is like ‘Avatar’!,” squeals 19-year-old Mabel (Piper Curda), the studio’s rare college-age heroine.
Shoots back her nutty professor, Dr. Fairfax (Kathy Kajimy): “This is nothing like ‘Avatar!’”
Sorry, Doc, it definitely is. And that’s fine. Placing the smart sci-fi story atop an animated family film feels right for Pixar, which has long fused the technological, the fantastical and the natural into a warm signature blend. Also, come on, “Avatar” is “Dances With Wolves” via “E.T.”
What separates “Hoppers” from the pack of recent Pix flix, which have been wholesome as a church bake sale, is its comic irreverence.
Director Daniel Chong’s original movie is terribly funny, and often in an unfamiliar, warped way for the cerebral and mushy studio. For example, I’ve never witnessed so many speaking characters be killed off in a Pixar movie — and laughed heartily at their offings to boot.
What’s the parallel to Pandora? Mabel, a budding environmental activist, has stumbled on a secret laboratory where her kooky teachers can beam their minds into realistic robot animals in order to study them. They call the devices “hoppers.”
Bold and fiery Mabel — PETA, but palatable — sees an opportunity.
The mayor of Beaverton, Jerry (Jon Hamm), plans to destroy her beloved local pond that’s teeming with wildlife to build an expressway. And the only thing stopping the egomaniacal pol — a more upbeat version of President Business from “The Lego Movie” — is the water’s critters, who have all mysteriously disappeared.
So, Mabel avatars into beaver-bot, and sets off in search of the lost creatures to discover why they’ve left.
From there, the movie written by Jesse Andrews (“Luca”) toys with “Toy Story.” Here’s what mischief fuzzy mammals, birds, reptiles and insects get up to when humans aren’t snooping around. Dance aerobics, it turns out.
Per the usual, “Hoppers” goes deep inside their intricate society. The beasts have a formal political system of antagonistic “Game of Thrones”-like royal houses. The most menacing are the Insect Queen (Meryl Streep — I’d call her a chameleon, but she’s playing a bug), a staunch monarch butterfly and her conniving caterpillar kid (Dave Franco). They’re scheming for power.
Perfectly content with his station is Mabel’s new best furry friend King George (Bobby Moynihan), a gullible beaver who ascended to the throne unexpectedly. He happily enforces “pond rules,” such as, “When you gotta eat, eat.”
That means predators have free rein to nosh on prey, and everybody’s cool with it. Because of bone-dry deliveries, like exhausted office drones, the four-legged cast members are hilarious as they go about their Animal Planet activities.
No surprise — talking lizards, sharks, bears, geese and frogs are the real stars here. They far outshine Mabel, even when she dons beaver attire. Much like a 19-year-old in a job interview, she doesn’t leave much of an impression.
Yes, the teen has a heartfelt motivation: The embattled pond was her late grandma’s favorite place. Mabel promised her that she’d protect it.
But in personality she doesn’t rank as one of Pixar’s most engaging leads, perhaps because she’s past voting age. Mabel is nestled in a nebulous phase between teenage rebellion and adulthood that’s pretty blasé, even if a touch of tension comes from her hiding her Homo sapien identity from her new diminutive pals. When animated, kids make better adventurers, plain and simple.
“Hoppers” continues Pixar’s run of humble, charming originals (“Luca,” “Elio”) in between billion-dollar-grossing, idea-starved sequels (“Inside Out 2,” probably “Toy Story 5”). The Disney-owned studio’s days of irrepressible innovation and unmatched imagination are well behind it. No one’s awed by anything anymore. “Coco,” almost 10 years ago, was their last new property to wow on the scale of peak Pixar.
Look, the new movie is likable and has a brain, heart and ample laughs. That’s more than I can say for most family fare. “A Minecraft Movie” made me wanna hop right out of the theater.
4/5 stars
Bounding into cinemas just in time for spring, the latest Pixar animation is a pleasingly charming tale of man vs nature, with a bit of crazy robot tech thrown in.
The star of Hoppers is Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda), a young animal-lover leading a one-girl protest over a freeway being built through the tranquil countryside near her hometown of Beaverton.
Because the freeway is the pet project of the town’s popular mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who is vying for re-election, Mabel’s protests fall on deaf ears.
Everything changes when she stumbles upon top-secret research by her biology professor, Dr Sam Fairfax (Kathy Najimy), that allows for the human consciousness to be linked to robotic animals. This lets users get up close and personal with other species.
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