Meet the Robinson's review by The Grim Ringler
Meet the Robinson’s
This is going to be a pretty strange review in that, by
the numbers it isn’t a really great movie at all. It’s just above average
actually, but when you turn to the fun factor, well, that it has in spades.
Let’s examine this.
An eccentric young boy who has lived his whole life in an
orphanage dreams of reuniting with his mother and being part of a family –
something he’s never known. Each family that comes in to the orphanage though
seems to see not the boy’s intelligence and passion but his quirks. He is just
too odd for them, in the end. The boy, fed up with hoping for finding a family
to love and adopt him, decides that he’ll instead focus his attention on
finding his mother and persuading her to take him back after leaving him on the
orphanage’s doorstep. Thus, the boy begins work on a device that will spur the
memory and allow the person wearing the invention to re-live moments in their
life. Feeling he’s finally gotten his memory device right, the boy enters it
into the school’s science fair but there are other eyes on his device that he
wouldn’t imagine. The boy, or rather his device, is the target of a strange man
in a bowler hat wants to steal the invention and does exactly that with a
little cunning and trickery. Just as a villain was watching though, so too was
another boy, this one chasing the man in the hat, and this one knowing far more
then he lets on. It turns out the man in the hat and the boy chasing him both
come from the future, and both are desperate to change the future for the young
inventor, someone who, it would seem, has an important role to play in what
shall come…if that is, his future doesn’t change first. While trying to figure
out what exactly is going on, and why he’s such an important person, the boy
meets a family, the Robinson’s, who are everything he could ask for, and feel
that maybe here, in the future, he has
found what he’s been looking for all along – a family of his own.
A beautifully animated film, this is one of Disney’s new
3-D films that use new technology and really bring you into the film. The 3-D
is really stunning and, while it’s not revolutionary in what it does in the
film – it’s the same whoa, it’s in my
face gags – it is very striking in what it brings out in the animation. The
characters are not terribly interesting until you get into the future, and
there the film shines. It seems that each member of the Robinson’s, and indeed,
in the entire future, are quirky and bring more life and fun to than the film
had before. It’s here that the filmmakers really play with the story, and with
how things come together. The villain, who you thought was so diabolical
character, turns out to be quite the bumbler when you
learn that it’s his hat that really wears the pants in the scheme. As much fun
as the film becomes though, there are just too many problems with the story and
plot. The story is nothing new, the revelations are things you can guess at
pretty easily, and the end, as satisfying as it is, still had a barb that
bothered me. All in all, it’s a great tech film, and one with some fantastic
moments but isn’t a film that really holds together.
Despite its flaws, I truly do like this film. The digital
animation is gorgeous and when things get into the future, the film really
picks up and becomes just weird enough to hold your attention. Families will
like it, kids will love it, but animation fans have seen this movie before,
under a dozen names, and this one doesn’t do much to remove itself from the
pack. Worth a rent, but that’s about it.
6 out of 10 Jackasses blog comments powered by Disqus
