)Meet The Robinsons
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This is an article about Meet The Robinsons from my local newspaper The Vindicator. I'm rooting for MTR, but I found the premise of this article somewhat believable. I dunno. I say, read it but don't trust it, because it is, after all, a movie review.
Oh, and I typed this verbatim, so if the grammar is weird, it's not my fault. Heheheh.
Charming movie about learning from failure doesn't quite succeed
The digital 3-D animated movie is overloaded with lessons for the kids.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
"Meet the Robinsons" embraces failure.
This wildly eccentric scatterbrained sci-fi farce positions itself firmly alongside the great Walt Disney's own willingness to accept failure in the pursuit of excellence. And then it fails itself.
But it's brimming with ambition and charm. A movie reworked and joked-up after Pixar's John Lasseter took over Disney Animation, it's about an inventor-orphan named Lewis who fails repeatedly, but who is taken to the future to help fix the past. It's a way of giving Lewis hope when he has none.
"I have no future. No one wants me."
Wilbur Robinson takes Lewis forward in time to convince him that he's telling the truth about time travel. While there, the orphan kid meets Wilbur's loony family. The Addams Family has nothing on the Robinsons. Adam West voices one cracked uncle, a futuristic pizza-deliverer. Enough said.
The villain, a dopey beanpole out of a Tim Burton movie, literally twirls his mustache. He wants to claim the kid's latest science-fair failure as his own, and since he also traveled from the future (sleek, shiny time-ships) we know he knows something potentially important and grand about Lewis.
A cute helper robot (voiced by Harland Williams), a demonic robotic bowler hat and a T.Rex have parts to play. Singing, swinging, ring-a-ding-dinging frogs croon.
Jumps off the screen
And if you see this in digital 3-D -- the only way to see it -- stuff pops off the screen at you. This is a lovely use of that technology -- startling depth and detail and colors.
Disney used real kids to voice the 12- and 13-and-unders here, and the one voicing Goob, Lewis' orphan-friend (Matthew Josten), is Charlie Brown Christmas precious.
But the plot is slapdash and derivative. To compensate, they overloaded this adaptation of the book "A Day With Wilbur Robinson" with lessons to pass on to the kids. It's as if the animation team knew they had taken a swing, and missed, but they wanted children -- and maybe their Disney bosses -- to know aiming high and falling short is OK.
"Keep moving forward."
If you know your Mouse history, you know where that Robinson family motto comes from. The brand-spanking new Disney Animation logo (a snippet of "Steamboat Willie") trumpets that connection to tradition, too.
Three-D screenings of the movie will be preceded by a lovely looking but joked-starved 1953 Donald Duck/Chip'n Dale 3-D short cartoon, "Working for Peanuts." (Check newspaper ads to find a local theater showing it in 3-D.)
The 3-D experiment didn't take off in the '50s, and it may just be a fad now. But if "Robinsons" is how they're going to fail (and "The Wild" and "Chicken Little"), something a lot grander than "Cars" will come from this Disney-Pixar marriage, someday soon.
~~=oP
Oh, and I typed this verbatim, so if the grammar is weird, it's not my fault. Heheheh.
Charming movie about learning from failure doesn't quite succeed
The digital 3-D animated movie is overloaded with lessons for the kids.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
"Meet the Robinsons" embraces failure.
This wildly eccentric scatterbrained sci-fi farce positions itself firmly alongside the great Walt Disney's own willingness to accept failure in the pursuit of excellence. And then it fails itself.
But it's brimming with ambition and charm. A movie reworked and joked-up after Pixar's John Lasseter took over Disney Animation, it's about an inventor-orphan named Lewis who fails repeatedly, but who is taken to the future to help fix the past. It's a way of giving Lewis hope when he has none.
"I have no future. No one wants me."
Wilbur Robinson takes Lewis forward in time to convince him that he's telling the truth about time travel. While there, the orphan kid meets Wilbur's loony family. The Addams Family has nothing on the Robinsons. Adam West voices one cracked uncle, a futuristic pizza-deliverer. Enough said.
The villain, a dopey beanpole out of a Tim Burton movie, literally twirls his mustache. He wants to claim the kid's latest science-fair failure as his own, and since he also traveled from the future (sleek, shiny time-ships) we know he knows something potentially important and grand about Lewis.
A cute helper robot (voiced by Harland Williams), a demonic robotic bowler hat and a T.Rex have parts to play. Singing, swinging, ring-a-ding-dinging frogs croon.
Jumps off the screen
And if you see this in digital 3-D -- the only way to see it -- stuff pops off the screen at you. This is a lovely use of that technology -- startling depth and detail and colors.
Disney used real kids to voice the 12- and 13-and-unders here, and the one voicing Goob, Lewis' orphan-friend (Matthew Josten), is Charlie Brown Christmas precious.
But the plot is slapdash and derivative. To compensate, they overloaded this adaptation of the book "A Day With Wilbur Robinson" with lessons to pass on to the kids. It's as if the animation team knew they had taken a swing, and missed, but they wanted children -- and maybe their Disney bosses -- to know aiming high and falling short is OK.
"Keep moving forward."
If you know your Mouse history, you know where that Robinson family motto comes from. The brand-spanking new Disney Animation logo (a snippet of "Steamboat Willie") trumpets that connection to tradition, too.
Three-D screenings of the movie will be preceded by a lovely looking but joked-starved 1953 Donald Duck/Chip'n Dale 3-D short cartoon, "Working for Peanuts." (Check newspaper ads to find a local theater showing it in 3-D.)
The 3-D experiment didn't take off in the '50s, and it may just be a fad now. But if "Robinsons" is how they're going to fail (and "The Wild" and "Chicken Little"), something a lot grander than "Cars" will come from this Disney-Pixar marriage, someday soon.
~~=oP
[img]http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/ff356/PixarVixen/sigs/SyndromeOlympictoss.jpg[/img]
[b]I ♥ Tony Rydinger[/b]
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[b]I ♥ Tony Rydinger[/b]
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Ditto!I'm soooo jealous! But I hope you both have a great time!
You guys are soooo lucky.
Please post on it ASAP!! Oh yeah, time machines, that would come in quite handy. I'd use it to speed up this semester and make it May 4, time for Spiderman 3!!!If I had a time machine, I'd already be there!
You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
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I just got home. Loved it! 
I'll definitely be seeing it again this weekend .. the story moves, moves, moves! Like chernabog, I only regret that we don't get to spend more time with the extended Robinson family .. but rest assured, there's plenty else to keep the mind occupied!
Adam West was 'on-stage' before the show .. he was a riot! (perhaps more of a riot than Disney might've expected!) "Wilbur" and "Lewis" were there, too .. in 'walk-around' costume form; they looked fantastic!
Congratulations to everyone at WDFA! And thanks for a very fun film.
More details later today; it's 3:20 AM here, and I gotta get some sleep so I can go to work this morning ..
I'll definitely be seeing it again this weekend .. the story moves, moves, moves! Like chernabog, I only regret that we don't get to spend more time with the extended Robinson family .. but rest assured, there's plenty else to keep the mind occupied!Adam West was 'on-stage' before the show .. he was a riot! (perhaps more of a riot than Disney might've expected!) "Wilbur" and "Lewis" were there, too .. in 'walk-around' costume form; they looked fantastic!
Congratulations to everyone at WDFA! And thanks for a very fun film.
More details later today; it's 3:20 AM here, and I gotta get some sleep so I can go to work this morning ..
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Awesome Drew!! Can't wait to hear about it.
Also, just a quick question: I have a friend with a 3-year-old daughter.
Would you say it's OK for a kid that young to see it?
She's a pretty sensitive (and very intelligent) little girl who has pretty much only seen stuff like Sesame Street, Barney, Blue's Clues and Teletubbies. Sometimes, certain things in movies and TV scare her easily.
Also, just a quick question: I have a friend with a 3-year-old daughter.
Would you say it's OK for a kid that young to see it?
She's a pretty sensitive (and very intelligent) little girl
who has pretty much only seen stuff like Sesame Street, Barney, Blue's Clues and Teletubbies. Sometimes, certain things in movies and TV scare her easily.You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!
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Shy,
My daughter isn't afraid of scary stuff in movies, and she's 3 1/2.
I'm not taking her. I think it's too loud in some parts, and it's the volume that disturbs her more than images (that dino can roar, even though he's cute!).
It's not a very scary movie. It's nowhere near the scaryness of most of the classic disneys.
But I'd recommend taking the girl to non-modern disney movies in a theater or on video first, as a dark theater and big screen are an overwhelming experience.
My daughter isn't afraid of scary stuff in movies, and she's 3 1/2.
I'm not taking her. I think it's too loud in some parts, and it's the volume that disturbs her more than images (that dino can roar, even though he's cute!).
It's not a very scary movie. It's nowhere near the scaryness of most of the classic disneys.
But I'd recommend taking the girl to non-modern disney movies in a theater or on video first, as a dark theater and big screen are an overwhelming experience.