Movie Reviews

Movie review: It Ends With Us – Baltimore Magazine

Published

2 years ago

August 11, 2024

Movie review: It Ends With Us – Baltimore Magazine

Warning: The following review contains some spoilers and discusses domestic violence.

With her cascading blonde hair, long legs, and toothpaste-commercial smile, Blake Lively is the epitome of the sun-kissed California beauty. It was actually a little far-fetched that she played some sort of Upper East Side princess in Gossip Girl—she’s surf boards and Laguna Beach all the way. But we bought it, mostly because her primary purpose on that show was to be the foil to the jealous Blair, who wanted the effortless charm that Lively’s Serena possessed.

In It Ends With Us, based on Colleen Hoover’s wildly popular novel (as seen on TikTok!), Lively does not have blond hair, but a mess of cooperative red curls, the sort that exist far more often in romance novels than real life. She wears flowy, artfully mismatched clothing—I spied some Magnolia Pearl, notorious for their expensive schmattas; she also seems to favor these architecturally complicated chainmail boots. She opens a flower shop in Boston, straight out of a “Bohemian Flower Shop” Pinterest board. It’s all a little ridiculous. It seems like cosplay.

Lively’s incongruous casting is a perfect metaphor for the film, which also seems to be suffering from an identity crisis.

At first, It Ends With Us seems like a love story. Lively’s Lily Blossom Bloom—yes, the film makes fun of the name, which feels like cheating since they’re the ones who gave her the name—meets hunky neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs) on a rooftop. (For the record, they also make fun of his soap-opera-ready name. Again, YOU NAMED HIM THAT.) She’s up there contemplating her father who just died, but whom she didn’t really love. (More on that in a bit.) Ryle comes on the roof to vent about something—he assaults a chair. Knowing that the film was ultimately going to be about domestic violence, I thought this was a good touch. They’re showing that he has a bad temper. And yet, for a while, Ryle is nothing but a dreamboat. Although he’s a notorious playboy, he vows to change his ways for Lily. He’s doting, sincere, patient. There’s a minor road block once it’s discovered that Ryle is the brother of Lily’s best friend, Allysa (Jenny Slate, here to save us). But their love cannot be stopped! With Allysa’s blessing, Ryle and Lily get married.

Okay, but let’s back-up a bit. In flashbacks, we also see glimpses of Lily’s first love, a homeless boy named Atlas (stop laughing). In those flashbacks, Lily is played by Isabela Ferrer and Atlas is played by Alex Neustaedter, who both only glancingly resemble their older counterparts. The flashbacks here are doing a lot of heavy lifting: They’re showing us Lily’s first love and showing us that Lily’s father beat Lily’s mother and eventually Atlas, when he discovers the boy in bed with his daughter—but they feel perfunctory. Baldoni seems much more interested in the scenes depicting Lily’s adult life (maybe because he’s in them?).

And then Ryle hits Lily. It kind of comes out of nowhere. This film would’ve been notably better if they’d established Ryle’s violent tendencies—getting jealous at a bar, maybe, or being enraged when his much-loved Bruins lose a game. Yes, we saw him assault that chair on the roof, but that was it. Beyond that, he was Prince Charming. Ryle gaslights Lily (and to a certain extent us) into thinking it was an accident. (The film intentional holds back on showing us the extent of his violence until later on.) Lily covers her bruise with some makeup and they go out for dinner with Allysa and her affable husband (Hasan Minhaj). The waiter looks kinda familiar? You guessed it, it’s Atlas, all grown up now and sporting a non-threatening beard (he’s played as an adult by Brandon Sklenar). He’s not just their waiter, he’s the restaurant’s owner and chef. (He is the Swiss Army Knife of convenient plot contrivances.)

Atlas sees the hastily covered bruise on Lily’s face and immediately groks what’s going on, even if she refuses to see it. He and Ryle fight and this is the beginning of the end, as Ryle becomes consumed by jealousy.

I experienced a fair amount of cognitive dissonance watching It Ends With Us—it plays like a sun-dappled romance that suddenly turns violent. (Apparently some people, expecting it to be an uncomplicated love story, felt deceived by the sudden change in tone.)

I appreciate the fact that this is ultimately a film—and book—about ending the cycle of violence. We’ve evolved past the “fall in love with your rapist” trope, thank goodness. But it feels like they want to have their cake and eat it, too, here—a hot romance with beautiful people and a “you go, girl” film about a woman rejecting her violent lover. And then there’s Atlas—chef, waiter, restaurant owner, former homeless kid turned bearded king—waiting in the wings. Is the answer to leaving your abusive husband having a better alternative on deck?

Movie Reviews

‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar’s best original movie in years

Published

12 minutes ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

‘Hoppers’ review: Pixar’s best original movie in years

“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.

Movie Reviews

‘Hoppers’ review: Who can argue with hilarious talking animals?

Published

12 hours ago

March 3, 2026

Press Room

‘Hoppers’ review: Who can argue with hilarious talking animals?

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.

Movie Reviews

Review | Hoppers: Pixar’s new animation is a hilarious, heartfelt animal Avatar

Published

1 day ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

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.

“This is like Avatar,” Mabel coos, and, in truth, it is. Plugged into a headset, Mabel is reborn inside a robotic beaver. She plans to recruit a real beaver to help populate the glade, which is set to be destroyed by Jerry’s proposed road.