As someone who’s spent most of her career working as a writer and is obsessed with movies, I couldn’t help but notice a recurring trend throughout the 2000s: the protagonists of so many movies—especially rom-coms—were writers, journalists, or worked for magazines. These characters did work they were proud of and somehow managed to afford lavish apartments in New York City, making journalism seem like the dream job. Even when The Devil Wears Prada (2006) pulled back the curtain on how exhausting and demanding that world could be beneath all the glamour, it still made surviving in the Big Apple on an assistant’s salary at a fashion magazine seem plausible. But perhaps times were different then.

Pixar is certainly no stranger to films about human beings turning into animals. In fact, between Brave (2012), Soul (2020), and Turning Red (2022), it seems to be a pretty prevalent theme. And after introducing technology in Up (2009) that allowed humans to understand what a dog was thinking, a movie where someone can literally experience life as an animal feels like a logical next step. As much as Hoppers fits perfectly within Pixar’s wheelhouse, it might also be their most absurd film yet. Thankfully, that absurdity works entirely in its favor.

Before stepping into the theater to see James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, I joked that the movie would be “just like the last one but with fire instead of water,” and that the next installment would simply rotate in another element. And, truth be told, I wasn’t that far off. How much you love the previous Avatar movies will probably determine how much you enjoy this one. So, full disclosure: I’m a fan of James Cameron, and I trust his vision, but the Avatar films have always been my least favorite of his works. That said, Fire and Ash possessed the potential to be my favorite entry so far.