Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
Pretty much from the first day I saw a poster or the trailer for this Disney animated work, I've been dreading it. Whoever cut the trailer for MEET THE ROBINSONS should be banned from the hallowed halls of Trailer University for compiling one of the weakest advertisements for a film ever. With the exception of the sequence involving the T-Rex complaining about its big head and little arms, the trailer doesn't contain a single funny moment or in any way convey just how clever and hilarious this movie actually is. I walked in to my screening of the film dreading, DREADING what I was about to see. By the way, if you get the chance to see the film in Digital 3-D, do so, even if you have to travel hundreds of miles. The 3-D in this film is as good as what we saw in MONSTER HOUSE last year. Once the film gets moving, you are in for one fantastic adventure, sci-fi, family film filled with irreverent characters, creative visuals and a host of great voice actors, most of whom are actually voice actors (and not just celebrities adding their name to an animated movie to boost the marquee value).
Young Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen) is an orphan and budding young inventor, whose latest contraption is sure to win the top prize at the science fair: his Memory Scanner, a machine he hopes will help him remember who his mother is (she left him in a basket at the front door of an orphanage just after he was born). During the fair, another young man named Arthur (Wesley Singerman) shows up looking for an evil villain known only as Bowler Hat Guy (director Stephen Anderson). The hat's name is Doris, in case you were wondering. Anyway, BHG steals the Memory Scanner, hoping to pass the invention off as his own to a big corporation. And Arthur and Lewis fly off in a time machine in the hopes of setting the world and time-space continuum right.
MEET THE ROBINSONS really takes off when we get to the near future and meet Arthur's insane family and a supporting cast of bizarre and more bizarre creatures. My personal favorite is the Sinatra-like band leader/mob boss Frankie the Frog, who leads a Rat Pack collection of frogs that are sharp dressers and talking like they just stepped out of "The Sopranos." The family (which includes grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles of Arthur's) are all creative types, whose minds are warped and sense of reality skewed. There are almost too many family members to keep track of, and that's kind of the point. Around every corner is some new visual stunner that amazes us as much as it does Lewis. The family patriarch is the unseen Mr. Robinson (whom we're told looks like Tom Selleck), whose company invented and built many devices that have become commonplace in the world of the future. He also invented two time machines, one of which was stolen by BHG and one taken by Arthur and subsequently crash landed on the family estate.
The family scrambles to head off any damage to the past and future BHG might cause, while BHG (whose motives are unclear for most of the film, but once made clear are quite interesting) wants nothing more than to destroy the family by changing the one thing in their past that brought them together. There's something kind of special about MEET THE ROBINSONS, a kind of magical twisted energy that goes beyond simply inserting modern references that will be out of date by the time this film comes out on DVD. But more importantly, this is a film that encourages people to use their brains. First-time feature director Anderson (who was an animator and artistic supervisor on other films) should be very proud of himself for not pandering to the kids but also not forgetting that they will be his primary audience. I guess what I'm saying is that parents should expect to be as entertained as the kiddies are — perhaps even more so. And considering how miserable HAPPILY N'EVER AFTER was, I'll take that with a smile on my face. The first great animated feature of the year is right here, folks.
Capone
