Meet the Robinsons
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Movie Reviews of Meet the Robinsons
Movie Review: Great Family Movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
MEET THE ROBINSONS is a great film for family viewing. The rapid-fire pace of the plot, the totally understandable plot lines and character motivations, and the breezy dialogue are probably enough to keep younger minds (and older ones that sometimes struggle with such simplistic fare) occupied. But when a cool, futuristic world with strange machines and whacky people are thrown in, choosing Meet the Robinsons is a no-brainer.
The movie is the 46th animated feature from Walt Disney Studios. Although it definitely lacks the crispness of a Pixar production, the animation is fluid and colorful, but after seeing everything Pixar is capable of, I couldn't help comparing one to the other.
One of the strange things about the movie is that it's adapted from a book that really isn't anything like the movie, save for the weird cast of family characters. The book is called A DAY WITH WILBUR ROBINSON and was written by William Joyce. Lewis isn't even a character in this book, nor is the book set in the future. However, the plot centers around trying to find Grandpa's teeth, which is featured for a short time in the movie.
I immediately liked Lewis, the movie's main character. When the story opened up with the young mother dropping baby Lewis off at the orphanage in the rain, the heartstrings get tugged fiercely. This familiar scene drags the audience right in to the rest of the story.
As resident genius of the orphanage, Lewis inadvertently makes everyone's life miserable to a degree. But he's like an energetic puppy and wins the audience over. Not only that, but his attempts at creating inventions are laugh-out-loud funny. The peanut butter/jelly gun toaster is amazing, and a joke they reuse later in the film to great success.
Lewis knows he's about to get too old for adoption, so he throws himself into his inventions again. He wants to build a memory projector that will allow him to reach into his own mind to see his mother and find out why she dropped him off at the orphanage. His teacher encourages Lewis to bring the device to the Science Fair. One of the best parts of the film is watching the students' reactions to the unveiling of the inventions. Adults and kids will die laughing because Lewis is so earnest, yet so doomed to failure.
The Science Fair turns mysterious almost immediately. Wilbur Robinson begins stalking Lewis. When Wilbur's caught by Lewis, Wilbur tries to pass himself off as a time cop and says he's there to fix the past. He warns Lewis about the Bowler Hat Guy trying to ruin Lewis's invention, but Lewis is convinced that the reason his new invention failed is the same reason all the others failed, that he, Lewis, simply isn't good at inventing things.
To prove to Lewis that he's telling the truth, Wilbur takes Lewis into the future. The movie really jets forward at this point. Of course, the boys don't agree about things and the time machine ends up getting crashed. Wilbur expects Lewis to know how to fix it.
The action turns incredibly zany at this point as Lewis meets Grandpa Bud and is taken on a tour of the house. In this madcap section, the humor is over-the-top funny but laid my ten-year-old and I both to waste as we struggled to keep up with all the rapid-fire cuts from one scene to the next. This is truly great stuff, and works perfectly in the movie at this point.
Lewis ends up getting to stay for dinner and getting to meet the rest of the family, including Wilbur's mom, Franny, who conducts a frog band. The frog band, although only a small part of the overall movie, is unforgettable. The lead frog acts and croons like Frank Sinatra, and leads the other frogs like a Mafia hard guy. One of the best scenes is when mini-Doris (the robotic hat that controls/leads Bowler Hat Guy) gets captured by the frogs and thrown into the back of a toy Cadillac.
The rest of the movie will probably be easy to figure out, even for the little people, but it's still a wonderful trip to take on family night viewing. My youngster and I finished up the film and he immediately watched it again.
The headlong rush of the plot to get causes viewers to gloss over the great voice acting of some of the people involved with the film. Angela Bassett is wonderful as Mildred, the director of the orphanage. Her constant support of Lewis as he deals with his inventing bug and the fact that he can't get adopted is great. She even still manages to put a trace of exasperation into her delivery.
Goob, Lewis's roommate, is a gem. I love him in his little league baseball uniform and talking about how much he stunk up the field. As a little league coach, I try not to let any kid on my team feel that way, but I know there are a lot of kids who end up feeling exactly like that anyway.
MEET THE ROBINSONS isn't the best of the Disney films, but it's definitely a welcome addition. In fact, Cornelius Robinson's motto, "Keep moving forward," comes from a speech Walt Disney himself made on several occasions to the creative minds that worked for him, and that's just what Walt Disney Studios is doing.
Movie Review: Keep Moving Forward
Summary: 5 Stars
Having just seen Wall-E, I looked in vain for Pixar in the credits on this film. John Lasseter's name is on it, but other than that, no sign of Luxo Jr., the little hopping Pixar lamp. This is a bit of an odd duck film because it missed its curtain time, unveiling late, and slipped under the radar. That said, the story line is as complex and developed as Wall-E, the film is so good I wished it were longer, and the DVD is graced with compelling extras.
You can read the story anywhere, but the book it came from is by William Joyce, also the creative pen behind Playtime Disney's Rolie Polie Olie (sp.). The Robinson look is very different than that, but it's got the same mixing of traditional retro design with imaginative take-offs. Wilbur Robinson just about steals the show, and the voice acting reminds me of another quality animated sleeper, Titan A.E.. Titan was the Bluth studio's swan song, and failed, as did Warner's The Iron Giant, merely because only Disney can market animation. That said, Disney almost couldn't, or didn't market Meet the Robinsons (despite the fact that the space/ time travel ship and the city would make great toys, and it's not like Disney to miss a licensing opportunity.
The extras really make the DVD. The best is the intervew with the director. The music is varied and strong enough to make the soundtrack stand on its own. There's also a history of inventions featurette that has the feel of '50s documentaries of Disneyland. It's got the same mix of science fact and speculation as earlier non-fiction segments that ran on the Disney TV shows, for instance the three space programs on the Tommorowland Disney Treasures set (which spurred our own space program). The last of the three is the best animated, but perpetuates the myth that Medievals thought the world was flat. This invention featurette admits that Galileo didn't invent the telescope, but otherwise plays fast and loose, giving Edison credit for inventing the light bulb, Philo T. Farnsworth the T.V., Bell the telephone, etc. In most cases, these men were perfecting ideas that many inventors were working on. In Edison's case, although he was a tireless inventor, he often stole his employees' and associates' ideas, particularly those of Nikola Tesla and Steinmetz (the brains behind General Electric).
All that is generally known, but it would be nice to have a bit more homework behind the Disney version. That said, in the realm of imagination the big D is unsurpassed. The video game looks quite good, and I'm all ready for the Robinson ride. The Robinsonian motto "Keep Moving Forward" even comes from Walt himself, as two quotes at the close of the film make clear. In this regard the film's motto recalls the song in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: "From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success".
Dexter's Laboratory likely sparked the current interest in whiz kid protagonists, but it's nice to see so much wit, enthusiasm, and, I think I can say, love put into a family film. In my view, the "G" rating stands for "great!"
Movie Review: Silly, fun, and worth watching again and AGAIN!
Summary: 5 Stars
Much like the main character "Lewis" is trying to discover where he comes from, it seems like animated films are following a trend of getting back to the bare bowns of story-telling with such movies as "Meet the Robisons", "Cars", and "Ratatouille". All of these movies follow a theme, and all of them are released by Disney, they all follow the trend of figuring out who you are, where you came from, and where you are going.
In the case of "Meet the Robinson's", it is the only recent Disney movie made independent of Pixar that has been worth seeing (I saw it six times in the theater, full price). It is cliché, and it has a few plot holes, but the positive elements out way any negative aspects in this movie. It is clean, fun, and refreshing.
The movie follows Lewis a young orphan/struggling scientist, who is on a mission to find his birth mother. It opens with him being left at the doorsteps of the orphanage where he lives, and seeing this scene alone in digital 3-D was worth the price. He works all night on his projects and keep his roommate up all night who seeks to be good at baseball, but fails because he is so tired. After Lewis finally creates the project he believes will reveal his mother to him, he is whisked away to the future and is on a quest to stop "Bowler Hat Guy". On the way, he meets a quirky family that makes Lewis seem normal.
The one reason that "Meet the Robison's" stands out amongst the gamut of new animated films, is because of its clever yet corny sense of humor. Disney takes some risk with a stab at the matrix and Asian cinema with what we will call the "Meatball fight". There of course is the odd morbid humor that "Bowler Hat Guy" produces. He has most of the quotable lines such as "Ooooh, I know, I could turn him into a duck!" and "Prepare to be amazed!"
On the other hand if you are expecting something groundbreaking, you will be disappointed, "Meet the Robinson's" is not groundbreaking, but has the potential to be a cult-classic. If you enjoy you movies silly, and want something clean, and original, you will like "Meet the Robinson's". Other wise, steer clear, because it is cheesy, overly sentimental, and corny; those are the things that make this movie so endearing!!!
God Bless & *ENJOY* ~Amy
Movie Review: The future has arrived..
Summary: 5 Stars
Meet the Robinsons' is a great family film period but especially if you have pre-teen kids and wanting to find a movie that will not insult their intelligence, make them laugh and still have a great message.
Meet the Robinson's is a movie that shows that it is very possible to make a clever, fun and funny movie for kids and pre-teens without having to add in any curse words, bathroom humor etc. or even to have to earn the obligatory PG rating to be hip enough for older kids. It has a very sharp and funny spoof the old Kung Fu films that you have to see to appreciate and is also very sharp in pacing, dialogue and moral message.
It deals with a 12 year old orphan boy, Lewis, and his frustration with not being adopted and trying to gain acceptance for his uniqueness and enthusiasm for inventions that others don't really seem to understand. Also, his wondering about what his mom was like and why he was given up for adoption. The film does a great job of showing how he works through these issues that kids who are adopted face. The director tells the story on the special features about how the main character in the film mirrored his own childhood.
The music in this film is just great. The song "Little Wonders" by former Matchbox 20 front man, Rob Thomas is excellent on several levels. It fits the mood of the film perfectly, ethereal and dream like and also has a fantastic message for kids to not let peer pressure and criticism keep you down but to keep pressing on. "Let it go, Let it roll right off your shoulders. Let it end the hardest part is over.. It's the heart that really matters in the end."
When Goob, Lewis' room mmate, retells the story of how bad things got for him in school. It cleverly shows how he missed the positive from friends and focused on the negative. `Hey Goob, nice binder Goob, his friends say. He walks by oblivious and recounts "They all hated me" My boys 8 and 11 easily caught the message and cracked up at the same time. They loved to go around quoting one liners from this one.
All in all, this is a great film that draws on elements from Back to the Future but has a style all it's own. A great escape from life in general and anything but a rehash of what you have seen before.
Check it out. The future has arrived..
Movie Review: Beautifully crazed, frantic and surreal with a good message
Summary: 5 Stars
I've mentioned this many times, but first it's important to remember that I'm biased. I don't think there's an animated Disney film that I've given less than a 10 out of 10. Heck, I give a large percentage of their live action fare a 10 out of 10, and almost never give any of their films lower than a 7 out of 10. I don't do this just because they're Disney and I'm issuing a vote to keep me in an extended, fantastical childhood (I need no assistance in maintaining an element of that, thank you); I do it because I really enjoy their work that much.
It's easy to see how many people might not care for Meet the Robinsons. It has far more in common stylistically with recent Disney films like Chicken Little (2005) and Lilo & Stitch (2002) than it does with the "classic" Disney films (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), etc.), or even their "second golden age" (The Lion King (1994), Beauty and the Beast (1991), etc.)--although it's worthwhile to note that some characteristics are not that far removed from Alice in Wonderland (1951) or even Pinocchio (1940), and you'll find things reminiscent of many other films--from Toy Story (1995) to Robots (2005) to Looney Tunes cartoons. It has an unusual, surrealistic flow, and it often seems like there's nowhere the animators won't go for a bit of weirdness.
But especially this latter fact is part of the charm to me. Meet the Robinsons may be adapted from the gorgeously drawn children's book, William Joyce's A Day with Wilbur Robinson (1993), but it seems just as inspired by Edward Lear's "Nonsense" books, which were some of my first favorites as a kid.
Visually, Meet the Robinsons is just as beautiful as Joyce's work. And beneath all the wonderfully frantic surrealism, which is loaded with quick, funny pop culture references, there's a great message here about creativity, experimentation, mindful experience and the necessity and acceptance of failure and rejection.