I Robinson - Una famiglia spaziale

The Robinsons is a one weird family. It takes time to know them, and once you do, you will like them.

They come from the future, filled with colourful buildings, flying jets, travelling tubes that would remind you of the Jetsons. Everyone is strange in their own way, from Frannie who conducts frog band, Grandpa who wears his clothes backward and twins Dimitri and Spike who stay in flower pots. Plus a talking robot like C-3PO.

In Back to the Future style, 13th year old Wilbur Robinson brings a smart nerd Lewis to 2037 to recover his invention. Are you lost yet? Now, all these eccentric characters and story can be quite hard to understand. Everything happens so fast, so don't lose your attention.

Once you get past the initial stage, everything falls nicely into place like a jigsaw in this intricate story. Although there isn't one main character who will appeal to you like The Incredibles, the whole Robinsons family will charm you the same.

Some critics may say: Too many characters. Too much dialogue. Too confusing. Too many things happening at the same time. Indeed, there were points where young children may go "huh?". Nevertheless, the singing frogs, big-headed dinosaur, colourful setting and music from Danny Elfman makes it all quite likable.

With a strong "keep moving forward" educational message and a touching ending, this animation is recommended to families who will continue to enjoy this work from Disney.

(As a bonus, audience will also be brought back in time with a nostalgic cartoon featuring Mickey, Donald and Goofy)

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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.

Lewis is an 12-year-old orphan who is always inventing things. However, in a science fair, he meets Wilbur, a 13-year-old boy from the future who is chasing after a Bowler Hat Man who came to the past to steal Lewis' invention, a machine that shows memories. When he steals it, Wilbur takes Lewis to the future, as Wilbur explains he is chasing the villain due to him stealing a time machine. This would lead to an adventure where Lewis meets Wilbur's family, The Robinsons, and stop The Bowler Hat Man from changing the future.

This is a horribly underrated film. The characters are actually enjoyable, especially the members of Wilbur's family, from Uncle Art, the galactic pizza delivery guy voiced by the late Adam West, to Tiny The T-Rex, each character has an unique personality and talent. Also, the film is beautifully animated and teaches a lesson: keep going forward, despite your failures. This is worth checking out.

I went to the theater this afternoon to catch an R-rated film and goofed on the times. The only movie available in my time frame allowed was Meet the Robinsons. I reluctantly bought a ticket and was pleasantly rewarded with a movie experience that reminded me very much of my childhood. When we got to go to the movies in the 50's and 60's, there were trailers, followed by the newsreel and then a cartoon before the main attraction. The non-three D version started with non-R rated trailers, followed by a Mickey Mouse cartoon (loved it!) and then the main feature. It was very entertaining to sit back and relax and not worry about the good guys dying, the amount of slaughter that would be portrayed, or that there wouldn't be a positive message at the end. As an adult, there were enough references to keep me entertained and from the sounds of the kids in the theater, they were obviously enjoying this movie. I would highly recommend it to all but the crankiest movie-goers, and I personally loved the quote from Uncle Walt at the end of the movie. When I was little, our whole family watched Walt Disney every Sunday and I particularly remember when it changed to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. Walt Disney was a man ahead of his time and I really miss his adventurous spirit and inquisitive mind. He introduced and ended each episode and I really enjoyed seeing him every week. I wish that Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color was still on every week and that new episodes would still be made.

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.