Descubriendo a los Robinsons

"Meet the Robinsons" it's a good animated movie that coursed correct Disney Animation Studios, after a series of miss hits.

The story has some great messages and the overall movie had some good characters. but it was away from being great! The animation looks like is a different studio's production and the art decoration is rather pour.

Not to be negative, I recommend this one to every family and every animation lover, it's just not the best thing you will ever witness.

From the second dark age of Disney the movies were rather hit or miss. Most of them lacked the same creative spark and wit of earlier productions, but once they hit rock bottom with the embarrasing Home On The Range and the ugly mean spirited Chicken Little they steadily rose from the ashes.

Despite having a pacing problem I wil not consider Meet The Robinsons a bad movie, because it's definitely more good-natured that aforementioned Chicken Little. The message is about believing in yourself and keeping your head up even when things seem hopeless. Its message isn't sugar coated or hammered in so credits to the writers for getting that right.

But yeah, as well intentioned as it might be, the pacing problem takes away the final punch that could make the movie a forgotten gem, but we get so many characters and jokes thrown at us from time to time that we don't get to know the side characters fully.

But overall a good expirience. Underrated? Yes. Masterpiece? No. But it has its moments which makes it worth your time.

I saw an advance screening of 'Meet The Robinsons' today with the family and all of us thoroughly enjoyed it. After getting a bit sick of recent CGI animal flicks (with the possible exception of Flushed Away), this was a refreshing change.

An intriguing storyline revolves around orphan Lewis who, as a 12-year old, is an up-and-coming inventor, and dreams of building a time machine to find out who his mother was. He meets a mysterious boy Wilbur Robinson who tries to save him from the equally mysterious man with the bowler hat. We are then drawn into a time travel story that, while having as many paradoxes as Back To The Future, ends with some interesting plot twists.

We saw the movie in 3D - and while there were a few "especially for 3D" visual effects, such as flying food - the 3D was not overdone and did not detract from the story.

When I first saw this movie, it terrified me. I don't remember how old I was, but I was scared. When I rewatched this movie later, I found it funny and entertaining. There is some stupid in this movie, but overall its enjoyable.

I'm writing reviews for a German movie website and thus got into a press screening of the new CG animated Disney movie "Meet the Robinsons" in Munich a little while ago. I'm a big animation fan myself and love many of the old Disney movies, although lately I've been more impressed with Pixar's films than anything Disney had to offer in the last few years. However, the story of this one is actually quite interesting and not as uninspired and generic as Disney's last traditionally animated feature Home on the Range or as messy as their first CG outing Chicken Little. It offers a number of nice surprises and even a good plot twist or two without causing too much of the old time-traveling headache. The humor also works quite well, although many of the jokes seem to be aimed at adults and little kids might not get all of them. (Didn't bother me, though…) Most importantly, this film does not contain a single fart joke nor any talking animals or even animal sidekicks (except for those singing frogs you might have seen in the trailers, but they're really not the same thing). I don't know how close this adaptation is to William Joyce's novel "A Day With Wilbur Robinson", as I've never read anything Joyce has written, but it all works pretty well and manages to be an exiting and entertaining family adventure movie.

One aspect of the movie that works particularly well is the design. The buildings, machines and landscapes of the future really look totally cool and have a very own look that is inspired by Joyce's illustrations and various visions of the future from the 50ies and 60ies. They're beautifully rendered, too. Furthermore, the animation is pretty awesome. The movements of the quirky characters are very fast but funny and cleverly stylized. The best example for this is the Bowler Hat Guy who moves in a unique style that makes him look like a giant Spider. This really is a welcome change from the hyper-realistic motion capturing stuff we've been seeing in a lot of movies lately. The character design isn't so bad either. However, the humans don't look quite as good as the ones in The Incredibles, the stylization of some characters makes them look a little too artificial for my taste. The voice-acting, which relies on solid voice actors and luckily doesn't involve any fancy stunt casting, leaves nothing to be desired. Danny Elfman's score is pretty fine, too. I could have done without the cheesy pop songs that were played at some parts of the film, though.

Altogether, I highly recommend seeing this warmhearted family film to any animation fan. It might not be as good as my Pixar favorites The Incredibles and Finding Nemo, but it sure is a lot better than most of the other studios' wisecracking-and-farting-animal flicks. With Pixar's John Lasseter pulling the strings at Disney's animation unit now, they finally seem to be getting back on the right track and I'm looking forward to their next projects, especially the traditionally animated The Frog Princess.

One last thing: as some of you might have heard, Disney wants to start putting original animated shorts in front of their feature films again. Meet the Robinsons kind of makes a start by showing the old Mickey, Donald & Goofy short Boat Builders in the beginning. It's a great experience to see one of those on the big screen again and the kids in the audience apparently loved it.