MEET THE ROBINSONS (2007)
Starring the voices of Angela Bassett, Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry, Matthew Josten, John H.H. Ford, Dara McGarry, Tom Kenny, Laurie Metcalf, Don Hall, Paul Butcher, Tracy Miller-Zarneke, Wesley Singerman, Jessie Flower, Stephen J. Anderson, Ethan Sandler, Harland Williams, Adam West and Tom Selleck.
Screenplay by Jon Bernstein.
Directed by Stephen J. Anderson.
Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. 102 minutes. Rated G.
Disney's Meet the Robinsons isn't going to make anyone ever forget the classics of their animation department, but it isn't a bad film for children. A time-traveling movie which is loosely based on a classic book but is oddly reminiscent of Back to the Future Part II, Meet the Robinsons tells a cute story and flitters back and forth in time in a way that will amuse small kids. It has lots of shiny lights and springy landscapes and gloriously over-the-top villains.
If you don't see the eventual twist ending coming a mile away then you probably haven't seen any time-travel movies before – which is probably what the producers are banking on, that their audience is too young to know the clichés of the style.
Meet the Robinsons isn't quite like the Pixar animated films in the fact that they are really not even trying to capture the adults – very few clever in-jokes to fly over the tykes’ heads. It is catering completely and totally to the small children which will make up most of its audience.
With that in mind, for the record, my four-year-old nephew, who mostly enjoyed the film, got a little impatient for the eventual arrival of Tiny the dinosaur. The character is played up a lot in the ads but doesn't show up until halfway in, has a couple of scenes and essentially is written out of the storyline. My nephew was also genuinely frightened by a dark section in the end which shows an alternate future in which the world was taken over by evil robots, so be careful about taking small children.
However, Meet the Robinsons has a lot of cool visuals, nice lessons about the importance of friends and family. It shows that if you work at it, you can achieve your dreams. Not a bad message to impart to kids. (3/07)
Ken Sharp
Copyright ©2007 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 30, 2007.
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