Movie Reviews
Tornado movie review & film summary (2025) | Roger Ebert
You’d be forgiven if you glanced at the monotonous western “Tornado” and decided that it’s a handsome genre exercise. The movie, which was shot in Scotland and set in 1790s Britain, follows a handful of laconic characters as they chase after each other for the usual formulaic reasons: gold and revenge. Writer/director John Maclean (“Slow West”) reteams with director of photography Robbie Ryan (“Poor Things”) for a typically attractive collaboration, which makes “Tornado” easy enough on the eyes. That helps considerably whenever the action lets up in this dialogue-light chase movie.
Substantive themes are hinted at throughout, though they’re most clearly (and bluntly) articulated in the movie’s load-bearing dialogue between the title heroine (Kōki), a samurai-sword-wielding teenager, and her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira), a traveling puppeteer. By contrast, Tim Roth and “Slow Horses” star Jack Lowden, playing a father/son duo of scruffy bandits, don’t say much that sticks in one’s mind.
“Tornado” also features a number of eye-popping images thanks to the filmmakers’ emphatic use of forced perspective. The movie may not deliver enough of what its creators offer, but to paraphrase the great Bugs Bunny during a rare self-justifying apology: So it’s mechanical!
Maclean’s latest—his first feature in ten years—begins mid-chase. The title character flees from vicious robber Sugarman (Roth) and his gang, whose members have Dick Tracy-esque names like Squid Lips (Jack Morris) and Lazy Legs (Douglass Russell). Sugarman’s looking for Tornado and a cache of gold; Sugarman’s son, Little Sugar (Lowden), mostly skulks about and looks for opportunities to prove himself. He finds one in Tornado, though he mostly hangs back and lets his dad and his associates go first.
Meanwhile, Tornado tries to resume her uneasy day-to-day routine with her father, whose home-spun wisdom falls on deaf ears. Admittedly, it’s hard to take seriously folksy dialogue like, “Learn patience. Know when to move and when to wait.” This might have been more endearing coming from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ talking rat mentor Splinter. It’s less impressive coming from a major supporting character who seems to speak for Maclean, like when Fujin, speaking in character as one of his marionettes during a puppet show, explains why we never really learn why Sugarman and his group do what they do since they’re motivated by “the most evil of all reasons—no reason at all.”
Tornado, the daughter of a Japanese man and an absent European mother, only has a little more on her mind. Sugarman’s pursuit triggers her fight-or-flight instincts, and she has no time for her life-lesson-dispensing father. Tornado also happens to live in changing times, when immigrants are still treated like curious anomalies, and swords will soon be replaced with guns. A number of other qualities and storytelling values remain constant, as Maclean suggests when Fujin explains that puppet show audiences “always cheer when evil is winning.” It’s hard not to agree with Tornado when she snarks back: “Because good is boring.”
Then again, Maclean’s right to emphasize the ScottishBritish countryside, both as an eye-catching backdrop and contextualizing environment, since it often dwarfs his human characters and makes them look small or absurd. Many times, the deep focus of any given static camera setup establishes how far the characters have traveled to get from one in-between place to the next. Other times, it serves to show how close together the characters actually are, since they’re just over there, one straight, semi-symmetrical line of sight apart from each other. So it’s very easy to catch a melancholy mood and therefore to appreciate the movie’s sobering atmosphere, even if we’re still stuck watching sketchy characters trudge after and chip away at each other.
There’s also an unusual tonal clash at the heart of “Tornado,” and it’s as apparent as the movie’s suggestive title: Kōki’s young heroine doesn’t simply represent one identity or mood, as a later line of dialogue explains. Maclean’s dramedy likewise features antic comedy, as in an early pratfall involving weak floorboards and a large, heavy named Kitten (Rory McCann), as well as suggestive images of an indifferent, but stunning autumnal landscape. The lighting and the editing in this movie are appealing enough to make you want to get lost in each carefully composed frame. The wispy dialogue, variable tone, and creeping pace make it harder to care.
Maclean’s execution frequently makes up for his distracting habit of both over- and underthinking certain key concepts. He and his collaborators still know how to achieve the effects they set out to. So your enjoyment of “Tornado” depends on how much you want to root for thinly drawn characters who don’t look strong enough to carry an entire movie. They can and they can’t, depending on how patient you’re feeling.
“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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