From March 13, 2012
Overall: C
I remember some students from Monte Vista telling me about how great it was back when it came out in 2007. For me, the movie wasn’t great, but it was far from bad, too. I thought it was a solid “B”. Fun to watch, but don’t go looking for much more than that.
PROS:
The voice of Goob is spot-on. Great character.
Bowler Hat Guy is also funny at times.
I appreciated the cameo of Space Mountain (from Disneyland) when Lewis first goes to the future.
I really like the song in the future, with the whole choir singing in the background.
I like the movie’s message about moving forward, progressing into the future. Not forgetting about the past, but not being hung up by it either.
So often I hear people talk about how much better things used to be… in the past. “Things were better in the ‘50’s” and so forth. And the whole religious notion of “The Fall of Man” that has always rubbed me the wrong way.
In Frank Herbert’s fourth DUNE novel (“God Emperor of Dune”), he talked about how human societies always have half-remembered visions of a Golden Age that we are constantly moving away from as time progresses. He also states that that notion is complete bullshit because such a Golden Age never existed, and I heartily agree. (When I find the specific quote, I’ll post it here.)
Other people, like Disney and Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry, also agreed that humans are constantly living better and better lives. We are progressing.
Anyway, I’m seeming to get off topic. My point was that the theme of “Meet the Robinson’s” is to keep moving forward and that the future is brighter than the past, which I agree with. I also appreciate that this theme was directly taken from a quote of Walt Disney. Nice.
CONS:
There are parts of it that are inspiring, but I wish they were MORE inspiring. There are parts of it that are funny, but I wish they were MORE funny (as well as more instances of humor).
Lewis, the main character, looks like the kid from “Jerry McGuire”, which is off-putting.
The animation wants very desperately to be Pixar, and it isn’t. The main character reminds me a whole hell of a lot of Dash from “The Incredibles”. Also, the girl with the ants in the science fair sounds and acts like Violet from “The Incredibles”. Lame.
The T-Rex is cool, but he moves WAY too fast. There’s no sense in the animation that it is a 6-ton creature. There's no skin jiggle as it moves. That may sound like a nit-picky thing, but I know a lot about animation, and getting a sense of weight and mass in a character is a sign of good animating. NOT getting that sense is a sign of bad animating. Disney Studios really nailed this seven years earlier when they did "Dinosaur". The T-Rex in this movie is about ten steps backward in terms of animation.
