Taking a look at Meet the Robinsons
Did you ever have one of those days when you felt like you wasted your time? Have you ever been aggravated because you waited in a 2 hour line, say at the Motor Vehicles office or maybe at the dentist? It’s the feeling that you could have been doing anything, literally anything else but this and your time would have been better spent. That’s the way I felt when I left the movie theater after watching Disney’s new animated feature “Meet the Robinsons”.
I went to see the film in what I believe was a good frame of mind. Being a Disney production, I was excited to see it. But the reviews I reported on yesterday were very mixed, so I was ready for anything. What I was not ready for was an absolute disastrously difficult 90-plus minutes of what can only be described as cinematic torture.
The story is certainly not a bad one. An orphan boy-genius inventor goes to the future and discovers what his life will become, while a villain with a personal grudge tries to change the hero’s life by altering history. It’s a simple story that has promise, but it buckles under the weight of maddening movie ineptness. I can’t count how many times during the film I turned to my wife and asked her if the scene we just watched was supposed to be funny. She didn’t know, and neither did the theater fill of children who never laughed once during the whole movie. Vast sections of twenties minutes or more would go by without any redeeming entertainment or story-telling value. It was just odd, sometimes trippy, but always confusing or mediocre at best. Even the animation came nowhere near the quality we are used to from Pixar productions. Hopefully, Disney will learn from this and let John Lasseter’s crew handle this end of the animation business from now on.
The film was preceded by the 1938 short “Boat Builders” starring Mickey, Donald and Goofy, which was a treat to see on the big screen. There were more laughs, and more happy children that came out of the seven minutes of a nearly 70 year old short than in the entire 90-plus minutes of “Meet the Robinsons”. That probably explains why the decision was made to put it there to begin with. I can only imagine when Disney Studio executives saw the finished product, this was the best they can think of to make the experience at least tolerable.
“Meet the Robinsons” ends with a poignant quote from Walt Disney that the filmmakers were undoubtedly hoping would add to the story in some way. Instead, it makes us wonder if Mr. Disney wouldn’t have pulled the plug on this film long before I wasted my money. It is also hard not to wonder how John Lasseter convinced himself this feature was good enough to represent Disney animation.