Meet The Robinsons film review

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MEET THE ROBINSONS

There is little original about Meet The Robinsons, but given the quality of the source material from which it garners the majority of its ideas, the result is still funny and sweet. Although based on William Joyce's book, the fingerprints of Back To The Future, Robots, The Incredibles, Wacky Races and Space Family Robinson are all over this.

The computer animation is striking, ranging from vibrant and stylized to dark and more realistic, though little that hasn't been seen before. Following the innovative and pioneering work of Pixar, simply relying on the visual magic of CG animation isn't enough. A strong story is essential, which is where Meet The Robinsons struggles. Things are inclined to be over complicated as it gets bogged down in the intricacies and implications of time travel. The most enjoyable feature is the absurdist humour that runs throughout, much of it clearly for the benefit of parents, though gags like, "Why is your dog wearing glasses? Because insurance won't pay for contacts," are silly enough for all the family.

Opening with the sad and shadowy sight of a baby boy being left on the step of an orphanage by his mother, it skips forward twelve years to show the young boy Lewis (Daniel Hansen) still at the orphanage. The blonde and bespectacled Lewis is an enthusiastic inventor of weird and wacky gizmos, like a machine designed to produce the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Trouble is, Lewis' experiments have a tendency to go wrong, often with disastrous results, which is the primary reason no family has ever adopted him. "I have no future. No one wants me," he mourns.

He vows to go in search of his birth mother. To that end, he sets about inventing a machine that can file through a brain for forgotten memories. In Lewis' case, he hopes to retrieve the one fleeting image he caught of his mother. His prototype catches the attention of the young Wilbur (Wesley Singerman) who claims to be from the future. When Lewis doubts him, Wilbur whisks him off in his flying machine to meet his extensive and eccentric family, who live in what resembles a Technicolor version of Metropolis. The memory machine also attracts the interest of the mustachioed villain, The Bowler Hat Guy (Stephen J. Anderson), who bears an uncanny resemblance to Dick Dastardly, but whose sidekick is not a mischievous dog, but a conniving bowler hat.