tek's rating: ½

Meet the Robinsons (G)
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This came out in 2007, but I didn't see it until 2016. However, it seems to me that for several years after it came out, whenever I went out to see any movie in a theater, I'd always see a theater policy announcement featuring Frankie and the Frogs, who were fairly minor characters in this movie. (And it wasn't often that I got a chance to go out to the movies, so if I remember seeing this announcement a lot, it must have been used for several years.) Anyway, I'm really glad I've finally seen the movie, because it's pretty awesome. I quite liked the animation, and the humor, and the drama, and the whole story, and the sheer craziness of it all. I did find a couple of twists to be predictable, but that didn't hurt my appreciation of the story at all. In fact, I don't think it could have possibly worked any other way.

So, it begins one dark and stormy night, when a woman leaves a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage. Twelve years later, that baby has grown up into a brilliant aspiring inventor named Lewis. He's very enthusiastic about his inventions, but he's also terribly disappointed that no one ever wants to adopt him. Then one day, Mildred (Angela Bassett), the woman who runs the orphanage, says something to him that inspires an idea for a new invention. He works on it day and night (much to the annoyance of his roommate, Michael "Goob" Yagoobian). Goob just wants to play baseball, and because of Lewis, he can't get any sleep, so he loses an important game. Anyway, once the invention is finished, Lewis enters it in a school science fair. (There were a couple of other students at the science fair, who I liked. One was a girl named Lizzy, who totally reminded me of Wednesday Addams, so I wish she'd had a larger role in the movie. The other one was a girl who... well, I'm not going to say anything about her.) But um, a boy named Wilbur Robinson shows up at the science fair, and tells Lewis that he's a time cop from the future, and warns him about a tall man in a bowler hat. Lewis just thinks he's crazy, but then Bowler Hat Guy shows up and... well, things go awry.

Later, Wilbur again finds Lewis, and ends up taking him into the future, just to prove that he is from the future (though he's not a cop, or anything). But the time machine ends up getting broken, and Wilbur wants Lewis to try and fix it before his family finds out what happened. But he also wants to stop Bowler Hat Guy from changing the past (which BHG had had stolen a second time machine to do). So Wilbur needs to get Lewis back to his own time. Meanwhile, BHG is trying to find Lewis, because he wants to ruin his life. (The reason for this is one of the things I thought was predictable.) Anyway, Wilbur wants to keep Lewis hidden from his family, but he ends up meeting them all (except for Wilbur's father, who's away on business). There are a bunch of relatives, and they're all quite amusingly eccentric. The most important one, I think, is Wilbur's mother, Franny (Nicole Sullivan), though Wilbur's grandfather, Bud, was also somewhat important. I really would like to have gotten to know the rest of the Robinsons better as individuals, but it was still fun watching their collective craziness. Oh... and they also have a robot named Carl (Harland Williams). And I guess that's all I want to say about the plot. But of course there's an amazingly happy ending (after lots of hilarity, as well as a potential dystopian timeline).


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