Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
4/1/07
We've all got our lists:
things that geek us up or just generally improve our enjoyment of any film
in which they appear. Mine's a little long, but here are a few things
that are on it:
-Time travel, particularly
when time streams are altered so we get to see more than one future depending
upon what changes are made in the past.
-Wacky inventions.
-Evil machines.
-Dinosaurs
-Mad scientists.
-Oh, and my sense of humor
is kinda loopy.
Since all these things (including
the loopy humor) appear in Disney's new animated film Meet the Robinsons,
odds were that I was gonna have a good time. But first-time director
Stephen J. Anderson wasn't content to simply trot out his laundry list
of geeky tot button-pushers. No, he and his 6 fellow screenwriters
have constructed a surprisingly tight, well-structured and surprisingly
profound story that entertains, amuses, and might even inspire.
Left on the steps of an orphanage
as a baby, young Lewis (voices of Daniel Hansen and Jordan Fry) has two
obsessions: finding a family to adopt him and building amazing
new inventions. Neither pursuit is going well: after a particularly
disastrous meeting with prospective new parents, he resolves to invent
a machine that will allow him to scan his own brain for memories of his
birth mother so he can track her down. His tireless work exhausts
his roommate Goob (Matthew Josten), but finally produces a machine that
seems to do exactly what he thinks it will. He's ready to unveil
it at the school science fair, but a mysterious man in a bowler hat (Stephen
J. Anderson) sabotages the machine. Its' failure drives Lewis into
despair while Bowler Hat Guy escapes with the machine, which he hopes to
pass off as his own invention. Lewis is confronted by a teenager
named Wilbur (Wesley Singerman), who claims to be from the future.
He's desperate to get Lewis back to the science fair to finish his demonstration,
but when the young inventor insists on proof that he's who he says he is,
Wilbur loads the kid up in his flying time machine and takes him to The
Future where, alas, the machine crashes. While Wilbur searches for
blueprints to fix it, Lewis wanders off and, yes, Meets the Robinsons.
Wilbur's family is, shall we say, a little odd. So odd, in fact,
that his Mom Franny (Nicole Sullivan) teaches frogs to sing, his Uncle
Art (Adam West) is a Superhero who delivers pizzas in a spaceship and his
Aunt Petunia (Ethan Sandler) is a hand puppet. While Lewis falls
in love with this eccentric group the Bowler Hat Guy (with his strange,
superintelligent flying hat Doris in tow) shows up, as desperate to get
Lewis to fix the memory reader as Wilbur is to have him fix the time machine.
Turns out, they've got secret agendas based on their knowledge of Lewis's
past... and his future.
Even writing about Meet
the Robinsons is fun: the only thing more amusing than the fact
that Aunt Petunia is a hand puppet is the fact that the movie never makes
any effort to explain how or why that's the case. In fact, pretty
much EVERY Robinson (and there are about a dozen I didn't mention) has
a major attribute that defies all logic and is simply taken for granted.
While the setup at the orphanage drags a little, once it hits The Future,
Meet
the Robinsons moves like lightning, and it's often its' blissful speed
that makes it so funny. After some delightful future hijinks, the
plot kicks in, and it's surprisingly potent.
The movie's got a message,
and it's not the least bit subtle about it. The winners in life take
their lumps and move on: wallowing in past failings is the recipe
for misery and despair. In an age of Victim Chique, it's a good thing
for kids (all of us, really) to hear, and unlike a lot of Disney films
(and comedies in general), the message isn't just announced at the end,
but manages to be an organic part of the story.
The alternate future Lewis
views if Bowler Hat Guy's plot succeeds is actually kinda scary for a G-rated
movie, but it pays off all the threads that led up to it brilliantly.
Screenwriters can get really bogged down trying to keep their time travel
straight (yes, Deja Vu, I'm talking about you...), but here it's
pretty easy to understand and very effectively staged. The screenplay
also manages to avoid the trap of seeming insincere about family and happiness:
the Robinsons are so delightful and seem to enjoy their lives so much that
there's no sense that the movie's got its' fingers crossed behind its'
back when it promotes marriage and family (yes, The Family Man,
I'm talking about you! Or maybe I'm talking about City Slickers...).
As its' plot suggests, Meet
the Robinsons is a lot quirkier and geekier than your standard Disney
faire. As such, it's closer to the work of John A. Davis (Jimmy
Neutron: Boy Genius and The Ant Bully) than the usual
Mouse House output. It's both silly and smart, and pretty much devoid
of humor anyone could find objectionable (what was the last animated movie
in which no one belched or farted?). I highly recommend it to little
boys of all ages.
Did I mention there's a dinosaur? |
