Meet the Robinsons

For a long time, Pixar and Disney were just two companies with distribution deals. When it was announced that Pixar was unloading the Disney burden, the Mouse House developed an inside division to do their own CGI movies.

Disney’s debut film was “Chicken Little,” a fun and entertaining movie. Probably the best thing about “Chicken Little” was that it cut from something completely different than the Pixar movies. I know that it did have cute and cuddly anthropomorphic animals, but it was something completely different than their usual work. This help set apart it’s style.

According to Kevin Carr, “The next non-Pixar CGI release from Disney was “The Wild,” a completely unoriginal and thoroughly annoying fare.” After Disney ended up buying Pixar, the animators inside gave the fans “Meet the Robinsons,” released in 2007. Like “Chicken Little,” this was a lot of fantasy for children, with a good amount of science fiction.

The story is about an orphan inventor kid named Lewis, voiced by Jordan Fry, who is really close to making a real mind projector. However, the evil Bowler Hat Guy, voiced by Steve Anderson, goes back in time to steal Lewis’s invention and make everything think it was his own. Lewis teams up with Wilbur Robinson, a kid from the future who is trying to make the events right, voiced by Wesley Singerman.

When Lewis time travels to the future with Wilbur, he finds an amazing and odd family (Laurie Metcalf, Steve Anderson, Ethan Sandler, Kelly Hoover, Don Hall, Adam West and Nicole Sullivan) that he wishes was his own. As we see more of Lewis’s future history revealed and the story behind the Bowler Hat Guy, the pieces to the puzzle come together that shows Lewis must struggle to save the future.

You might be wondering if “Meet the Robinsons” is as good as any of the Pixar films. Actually, it doesn’t come anywhere close, but it’s still decent. In Carr’s opinion, “It’s about as entertaining as the lower end Pixar films like “Cars,” but it’s a long way from “The Incredibles.”” He may be right, although I never compared this movie to any of the Pixar movies, but it’s still a good family movie that everyone should sit down and watch.

Carr joked that, ““Meet the Robinson” tasted like chicken – “Chicken Little,” that is.” The movie had the same visionary style and chaotic storytelling. The animation is just perfect, blending 2D methods with modern computer character design. Like “The Incredibles,” it gave a cool vision of the future, not in the way that what it would be like but what would people thought it would look like in the 1950s.

The story works for the entire family. It’s not terribly distinctive or erratic. Actually, it’s pretty easy to see where all the plot twists are going to fall in the first half hour or so. Plus, in the middle, when they introduce the Robinson family, it slows down a lot and lowers itself to cheap jokes. Carr admits, “But still, I had fun, as did my five-year-old son whom I took along for the ride.”

In the end, I actually thought this was a good movie and was actually much better than “Chicken Little.” Then again, I saw this one first before I saw “Chicken Little,” so I guess that’s probably the reason why. You could actually compare this movie to “Back to the Future” in the sense of time travelling to fix the events of the future to make sure everything is set right. However, like everyone says, our future is unwritten and we can make of it whatever we’d like it to, as long as we are happy with the way our lives have gone thus far. In the end, I definitely say sit down with the whole family and check this movie out, you will absolutely love it.

Watch out tomorrow for more entries of “Disney Month.”