From the Shelf: Meet the Robinsons

Keep moving forward

I said that I was considering covering this in my Bolt write-up, and I meant it.

As previously mentioned, the aughts were not a great time for Disney’s legendary animation studio. For decades, the only game in town was seemingly outclassed by Pixar, Dreamworks, and soon even Blue Sky’s studios. Part of this came from the other studios prioritizing the newly profitable boom in computer animation, which Disney’s studio was toying with, but mostly stuck to their traditional hand-drawn features. Eventually, WDAS (the abbreviation for Walt Disney Animation Studio, which I will use from here) put a pause on hand-drawn films, 2004’s Home on the Range being their initial last, as they jumped to focusing on computer animated films, starting with 2005’s Chicken Little. These are not movies that I have much of any affinity for, but I’ll be the first to admit- I was probably out of the demographic by this point, entering my adolescence and cutting back on cartoon watching, give or take a handful of worthy TV series and the occasional Pixar or Ghibli movie.

Although maybe that’s the problem, Disney at their finest transcended “demographics” and made movies that could appeal to virtually anyone. I recently rewatched Bambi, and was still awed by the film’s gentle, earnest nature, warm humor, and earned gravitas as I was when first discovering the film as a child. That may have came from the golden age of Walt Disney’s creativity, but then-(slightly)more recent successes which were still lingering in audiences minds like The Lion King and Lilo & Stitch became instantly beloved for a reason, and I was never above certain Pixar titles like The Incredibles. Good work can transcend age, race, gender, or any other factor you can think of. These are great movies that I think have plenty to offer despite being family-friendly.

Disney can and should be capable of making these kinds of works again, which is probably why John Lasseter was hired to run WDAS alongside his precious Pixar. I briefly detailed his history at the former in my Bolt review, which was his first film covering mostly from start to finish, while he inherited the studio’s prior project, an adaptation of William Joyce’s children’s book, A Day with Wilbur Robinson. Everything I can find about the storybook suggests that it’s a nice little romp in which the titular Wilbur has his best friend, Lewis, meet his eccentric family and go on an adventure to find Grandpa Robinson’s missing teeth. Not much of a story, but the studio has made more out of less.

The major change I can find about the story is making it more about Lewis, who is now an orphan in the present day. The almost-teenager (his 13th birthday approaches), Lewis is an overactive inventor who has given up on the prospect of being adopted, feeling that no potential foster parents get him and realizing that teenagers are seldom adopted. Despondent, Wilbur invents a time machine for his school’s science fair that can potentially take him back to meet the mother who abandoned him at the orphanage. This plan is paused, however, when a boy from the future has Lewis take him back to his time.

This is where Wilbur Robinson comes in, as he needs to protect Lewis from a man with a bowler hat (hence known as the Bowler Hat Guy), who has a nefarious scheme to take down the young orphan for reasons we don’t learn until the story moves on. Wilbur takes Lewis back to his time, 30 years in the future, but they’re screwed when the machine is stuck. Lewis agrees to help fix the machine and bring him back on the condition that Lewis gets to make his original stop and meet his mother. Along the way, Lewis meets Wilbur’s eccentric family, which includes his mother Franny, who trains frogs to sing in a choir, the family robot Carl, and Uncle Art, the super hero pizza delivery guy.

I’ll be honest, the second act is my least favorite part of the movie, as it’s largely a grab bag of wacky characters and scenarios that offers sensible jokes, and finds more purpose for the Bowler Hat Guy, but feels slight in comparison to the more heartwarming book ends. Still, this is ultimately a movie meant to entertain the family, most of all the young children in the crowd, who will (and probably do) find bits like the wacky uncle with the hand puppet and the extended food fight funny, and it’s not like they’re entirely wrong- there’s good jokes here! This just isn’t the part of the movie that I tend to think back to, although it’s a significant chunk of it.

If you don’t mind me spoiling a nearly-20-year-old movie, we learn that this is Lewis’ future family- Wilbur is his son, Franny his wife, and the grandparents are the couple who will eventually adopt him. Furthermore, the Bowler Hat Guy isn’t just a random person who hates Lewis, but rather his put-on roommate, Goob, who is severely sleep deprived and blames his future failure in life to the former roomie who never let him get some rest. It’s a fairly predictable twist, especially when you see that Lewis is forced to keep his hair hidden at all times when at the Robinson house- he’s a shonen hero with an instantly recognizable do, after all.

The theme of Meet the Robinsons, which the movie likes to bash in your head repeatedly, is keep moving forward. Don’t forget the past, but don’t let it define you. It’s okay to fail, but don’t dwell on your failure, remember it as an example of what not to do next time. Both Lewis and Goob need to learn this so they can move on and find their place in life.

Director Stephen Anderson took on the film when he learned of the story- like Lewis and Goob, Anderson was an orphan, and like Lewis, wondered about the parents who left him behind. According to one of the Blu-Ray’s featurettes, Anderson’s adopted parents agreed that when he turned 18, he was allowed to look up said parents, which he forgot about until he reached his twenties. To once again spoil the movie, Lewis eventually gets his chance to see his mother in action, but decides against it and heads to meet with his new adopted family.

I’m not an orphan, but I think that touch of personality is what makes Meet the Robinsons work as well for me as it does, and it also factors in something different that this era of Disney animation does as opposed to Walt’s time. While animators were more than able to add their own personal touches in their work, the features were traditionally Walt’s stories, they told what he wanted to tell as opposed to what his directors or writers could envision. The modern day directors, writers, and producers at WDAS and Pixar have been implementing their own personal connections to their works, like how 2022’s Turning Red largely read from director Domee Shi’s experiences as an only Chinese-American teenager growing up in early-2000’s Canada. I find Anderson’s connection to Lewis’ story to be what draws me in.

Unfortunately, despite Lasseter’s contributions, like including a chase scene with a T rex(!) and his desire to make the Bowler Hat Guy scarier, Meet the Robinsons didn’t perform especially well, in the box office or in terms of critics or awards. The film was not one of three finalists for this year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (instead losing its slot to Pixar’s Ratatouille, lovely French graphic novel adaptation Persepolis (another worthy future entry here), and… Sony’s Surf’s Up. Hey, penguins were in) and was only nominated for two Annie Awards.

I do think the lack of a big draw for the voice cast may have hurt the film’s box office a smidge, the same way Miley Cyrus’ mere presence in Bolt likely helped to put butts in seats. Supposedly, Disney wanted Jim Carrey to voice the Bowler Hat Guy, which makes sense, as they were likely hoping he’d match the energy and wide appeal Robin Williams brought to Aladdin, but he declined, which lead to director Anderson to voice the villain. And as far as I’m concerned, this was a fair trade he’s excellent in the role. The bulk of the cast feature familiar actors who have already done Disney work, such as Laurie Metcalf (who has portrayed Andy’s mom in the Toy Story franchise and Jim Hawkins’ mother in Treasure Planet) as Wilbur’s grandma/Lewis’ future adoptive mother Lucille, Nicole Sullivan (who would have just wrapped up her role as fan favorite Kim Possible antagonist She Go) as Franny, and Adam West’s (yes, even he had a brief part in Chicken Little) inspired casting as Art the pizza deliverer. Not exactly setting the world on fire, especially as Metcalf was a decade removed between Roseanne’s finish and eventual return to ABC. Not that casting big names is everything (I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t even know Metcalf voiced Andy’s mom), but a name sure can help.

The thing is, weak numbers on the big screen don’t necessarily result in a film’s death sentence. The Wizard of Oz wasn’t exactly a flop, but it made a fraction of MGM’s other major 1939 release, Gone with the Wind did, and it eventually stood tall; Blade Runner and John Carpenter’s The Thing were released on the same day in 1982 and both flopped heavily, and now they’re regarded as definitive science-fiction and horror, respectively. Disney films in particular have a history of underperforming at the box office and eventually becoming classics- Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi are major examples- and it helps that back when home video remained as vital a part of the industry as theatrical and now streaming, that their films would consistently sell as time-tested babysitters. I don’t know how many people saw Meet the Robinsons in its original theatrical release, but it became nearly as reliable a part of a Disney fan’s DVD and/or Blu-Ray collection as Finding Nemo or The Lion King.

I did not see the movie in theaters, nor had much exposure to Meet the Robinsons during its original push- my one memory from that spring came from a trip to my nearest Disney Store when I was disappointed to find a stress ball in the shape of Wilbur’s head that I had hoped was Jake Long. When I started playing catch up with WDAS at the turn of the 2010s, on the films I had admired the most back in the day and what I had missed, I found a delightful, if imperfect film that I’m glad to turn back to. Sitting right next to both Grindhouse features and Ratatouille (I’m a freak who organizes my films chronologically), while I try to keep moving forward, there’s nothing wrong with returning to the past here and there. I intend to keep moving forward and hope for better days from Disney, wishing that the studio who made Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice in Wonderland, for example, could recreate that magic. Sometimes a reminder of the right they can do, even when if imperfect (I didn’t even get into how the animation has aged), is important.

Yeah, I didn’t do one of my new weekly posts this week, I didn’t have much to say. Maybe next time? I also hope to work on a Sopranos post soon, and maybe something else entirely.