The Griffon News

“Meet the Robinsons” is an energetic film. However, craziness and high-tech computer graphics aren’t enough to save it. The animation was very similar to that of other computer generated cartoons, such as “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius” and “Robots.” Decent, but nothing really new or groundbreaking.

“Meet the Robinsons” was adapted from the children’s novel of the same name, by William Joyce.

There’s a lot of story packed into “Meet the Robinsons,” and not much time is spent on any one element. The story follows a young boy (Lewis), who is left at an orphanage practically from birth. He grows up with a passion to invent things, but the inventions never quite work out and he never is adopted.

As the movie goes on, we find his main dream is to invent a time machine to find out who his mother was. At a science fair, when he finally gets an invention to work, a young boy, Wilbur, shows up and insists he is from the future sent to watch out for the “Bowler Hat Guy”.

Then later on the Bowler Hat Guy comes and destroys Lewis’ invention before he has a chance to show anyone. And from there, Wilbur gets Lewis to travel to the future with him, closely followed by the “Bowler Hat Guy.”

The movie centers around Lewis, and you really don’t even meet much of the futuristic eccentric Robinson family. The family consists of a mom who teaches frogs to sing, a Grandpa Bud who wears his clothes backwards, Uncle Art who is the superhero delivery man, Uncle Spike and Uncle Dmitri, who lives in pots on the front porch, and other “special” Robinsons.

There seems to be too much happening at the same time for you really to ground yourself. The movie starts off to be a sweet tale about an orphan learning the meaning of family. Then it becomes a story about the vision of what might be the future with wise-guy frogs, dinosaurs, robots and other advanced technology, which also seems like a twist on a “Back to the Future” movie. And it also feels like it’s a race against (and across) time to save the world from Bowler Hat Guy. So it’s very easy for a person to get lost in the story and even at the very end of it feel a bit unfulfilled.

But if you’re going for the sake of taking your child or younger sibling, then they will be too into the colorful buildings, flying jets and the traveling tubes that only our generation would be reminded of the “Jetsons.”

The 90-minute movie showcases director Stephen J Anderson at the helm of a major motion picture for the first time. He was able to work with major vocal talents like Angela  Bassett, as the kindly orphanage owner; and Laurie Metcalf, as the wacky inventor from Inventco Labs and one of the judges as Lewis’ science fair. Those who were lucky to see him in action, Adam West from TV’s old “Batman” live action show, is Wilbur’s superhero uncle/pizza delivery man.

The soundtrack for the film was composed by Oscar Nominee Danny Elfman, who wrote music for movies like “Batman,” “Big Fish” and “Spider-Man 2.”