The Review

When I kid, I was enthralled with the Jetsons. Bubble cars, a robot house keeper, and no end to the flying. But in twenty years, Hollywood has effectively ruined the future. Gone are the hover-boards, the flying cars, the silver jump-suits. The future is now a bad, scary place, full of nothing except for rampant pollution and a few zombies. Kids are told that real progress is found in regress. Real living only comes in hunter-gatherer societies, where people don’t use electricity, and life expectancy hovers between 40 and 45.

Meet the Robinsons boldly stands up to these inanities, siding instead with George Jetson. The future is going to be full of sweet technology, bringing brighter colors and funnier jokes. It is not something to be feared but embraced.

The movie features the Lewis, a brilliant orphan who repeatedly scares off potential new parents with his eccentric commitment to Inventing. When Lewis decides his only hope for a family is to find his mother, he invents a brain-scanner that could retrieve his earliest childhood memories. But when he unveils his masterpiece at the school science fair, two strangers from the future show up to alter his destiny. Lewis is left with no choice but to return with one of them to the future in order to preserve his own future. This is where he “meets the Robinsons.”

The family is way over the top, to be sure, but somehow even the obligatory dinner-table-fiasco scene comes off as just fun. Adults will very quickly put the puzzle pieces together to guess the major plot twist, and kids are given just enough hints to get it later on, so that by the time the villain proclaims “Haven’t you figured it out yet,” many of them will say “I did!” Perhaps the title should have included the line “A Child’s Introduction to the Complexities of Time Travel in Science Fiction.”

By the end of the movie, kids are cheering for Lewis to hit the books and start inventing. And that is the other great success of this film. It isn’t preachy about learning, but it shows the potential payoff of being smart.

The Kids

They’ll love it, as usual. The Meatball Cannon and the Hedge T-Rex will provide the most delight. There is nothing particularly violent or scary. Overall, the effects will probably be all positive.

The Verdict: Almost Pleasant

How annoying is it? It is made by Disney, which already puts two strikes against it. It features a healthy dose of pop songs and a crazy family, which is an over-explored theme in any genre. The villain is stupid, and some of the scenes are complete circuses. All in all, it was perfect recipe for exasperation. For that reason alone, I have to put one strike against it. But honestly, I wasn’t annoyed. I was only disappointed that I didn’t see it when I was a kid.