Meet the Robinsons

Animated, Family, Children
Rating: 11/20 (bonus point for handlebar mustache)
Plot: An orphaned kid inventor travels to the future and tries to save the world from the misguided deeds of a man with a handlebar mustache and a talking bowler.

Meet the Robinsons is a colorful film that is fun for the eyes, and these computer people are getting better at making cartoon people look more like real people. The movie is burbling with creativity, and there are all kinds of nifty structures and gadgets to see in the Dr. Seussian future--tubal and bubbly transportation, singing frogs, trampolines built into the ground, sausage cannons, etc. There's enough going on visually to maybe require multiple viewings and definitely keep a child entertained. And I'm sort of a sucker for handlebar mustaches and will always support the use of evil hats in movies.

But you see all those characters up there in the picture? Yeah, there are a lot of them. The main one (Chester or Wally or something) is in the middle with the spiked hair and the glasses. I can't remember the other characters' names either. Even though this was a computer-animated, and therefore more 3D-ish cartoonary, the characters were frustratingly two-dimensional. This, like the Dreamworks movies, tried so hard to out-Pixar Pixar, and end up with something that just looks like the product of people who have tried too hard. There's no heart and soul here. The story is really predictable and tidy and full of holes. The characters don't become real, and there's no reason to care about any of them--even Chester or Wally or something. We find out just as much about the octopus (he's a butler) as we do the guy in the back with a pizza (he delivers pizzas) and, sadly, almost as much as we do about the main character. And although there's an attempt to tie everything in thematically, and even a link to a quote from Walt Disney, it just seems forced. I can picture the writers in a room saying, "Well, Finding Nemo and Toy Story had clear morals...we better squeeze some kind of lesson into this!" The quirk machine was turned up to 11 which leaves a finished product that feels more like a rough draft, a series of gags and slapstick that never really adds up to something coherent. Weirdness was substituted for humor and good storytelling, and I just couldn't latch on.

Wife's rating: 13/20; ; Dylan's rating: 11/20; Emma's rating: 15/20; Abbey's rating: 18/20

Here's the top half of my head enjoying Meet the Robinsons: