MEET THE ROBINSONS / Stephen J. Anderson (2007)

April 3rd, 2007 by Scott Marks

MEET THE ROBINSONS (2007)

Meet the Robinsons (2007)

Directed by: Stephen J. Anderson

Written by: Michelle Bochner, Stephen J. Anderson

Cast: Angela Bassett, Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry, Matthew Josten, John H. H. Ford, Dara McGarry, Tom Kenny, Laurie Metcalf, Don Hall, Paul Butcher, Tracey Miller-Zarneke, Wesley Singerman, Jessie Flower, Stephen J. Anderson, Ethan Sandler

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Running Time: 102 min.

Genres: 3-D, Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi

Several months ago I sang the praises of Disney’s 3-D enhanced reissue of The Nightmare before Christmas. The studio’s newest release is their first original film shot in Disney Digital 3-D. The good news is you’ll be ducking and dodging for 100 minutes: the stereoscopic effects are thrilling. The bad news is, for a comedy there aren’t many laughs.

Poor Lewis! He’s a brilliant child inventor who just can’t seem to find a family to bail him out of the orphanage. After 124 sets of potential parents the kid can’t make it past the interview stage. In one instance, a peanut butter and jelly helmet jams and a prospective pater, allergic to peanuts, gets caught in a spray of goobers.

From Dumbo to Bambi to Lady and the Tramp, Disney’s mother figures have spentdecades indoctrinating children into a world of adult neuroses. Contemporary directors keep Uncle Walt’s theory alive and take great delight in their motherly mise-en-scene. In Finding Nemo, the motherfish is killed before the opening credits. In Meet the Robinsons, Lewis takes a nod from Robert Zemeckis by creating a memory scanner to transport him back to the future in search of his birth mother.

If this film hits big, it won’t be long before Disneyland clears a couple of new acres for a Todayland annex. The look of this charming ultramodern city, with its streamlined design and residents riding through town in giant bubbles, doesn’t seem to have advanced much beyond America’s vision of the future in the 1950s.

While it starts well and ends in an agreeably predictable manner, the film’s second act needed propping up. Once Lewis arrives in Todayland and hooks up with Wilbur Robinson, a bulimic Big Boy minus the hamburger, the effects and pace slacken.

What it lacks in laughs is more than compensated for with a slew of bright and affectionate homage. The main source of nutrition in Lewis’ home town appears to spring from Tash Farms, named after animation/live action director Frank Tashlin. Billboards throughout the town remind us of those great “Friz Cola” advertising signs in Loony Tunes. The film’s crowning moment is a Tashlin-inspired Science Fair avalanche gag.

Singing frogs simultaneously bow deep to Chuck Jones and Martin Scorsese. (That alone earned it an extra star!) The Robinsons appear to have been grafted from Kaufman & Hart’s You Can’t Take it With You. The villain, simply called “The Bowler Hat Guy,” employs floating remote Magritte derbies. The BHG even looks a cross between Quentin Tarantino and Grandpa Munster, but I don’t think that was intentional.

When it’s over and the surprise is revealed, do the math. I know it’s a fantasy, but bubbles and spaceships replacing automobiles will probably take more than 25 or 30 years to develop. The filmmakers are probably banking on those nationwide low math test scores.

Oddly enough, The Nightmare before Christmas, which wasn’t originally designed in 3-D, had more depth and eye-popping effects than Meet the Robinsons. Even more mind boggling is that the film didn’t top the weekend box office. Hollywood offers fresh stereoscopy and audiences flock to yet another Will Ferrell marginal-sport “comedy” that I wouldn’t see at gunpoint. Give the public what they want and they’ll turn out in droves every time!

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