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It's been awhile since I've reviewed any animated film. Mainly because it's been awhile since I've seen any animated film. However, since I'm home with the flu, I figured while snot was draining out of my head, it was as good a time as any to watch Meet The Robinsons. Mainly because nothing else is on, and a friend of mine loaned me the DVD, so it didn't cost me anything.

 

Here's my review, in a nutshell:

 

 

 

Seriously... if you're a filmmaker... never ever put scenes like these in your film unless you're absolutely certain the audience won't be having the exact same thoughts.

 

To be fair, Meet The Robinsons is better than Chicken Little (but given that the main character looks like Chicken Little, it's hard to separate the two). "Meet" (or "Meat" as it was referred to at Disney), had the distinction of being the last film produced mostly by the "old" Disney, but then it was finished under Pixar's regime. The problem though was that there wasn't enough time to completely gut and re-make the whole film. They had to rush the thing through, patch up what they could, and make the best of it, since they already had a commitment to a release date they couldn't change or back out of. All other films in production had no such commitments, so everything else was basically put on hold until the films could be re-evaluated (or outright canceled) in order to bring them closer to Pixar's standards (which is why Disney bought them in the first place).

 

There were also a lot of creative differences during the course of the film, including at one point eschewing the style of the original children's book's author, for the generic character designs that are left onscreen. The models are a good ten years behind Pixar. They look static and lifeless, and for the most part are animated with most of the same clichéd movements that dominated Chicken Little. They often lack weight, solidity, fluidity, and seem more like plastic dolls than living beings. The animation just isn't compelling. They're moving from point to point - not living or thinking. Collisions, cloth, hair, and physics are equally poor.

 

The future city has kind of an interesting design to it, but otherwise the film doesn't have much of a strong style to it. It just looks like more of the rendered-the-exact-same-way CGI we've seen a dozen times now. The alternate future which appears near the end of the film is much more interesting looking. I would have rather seen that film.

 

The big problem with the film though, is that I just couldn't have possibly cared less about any of the characters in it. At all. The two main kid characters have no interesting or redeeming traits, and are so bland that it's hard to relate to them. They have no real chemistry and it's hard to ever accept them as being friends. They just seem to annoy each other. Plot-wise, I'd figured out the whole story (without half-trying) 43 minutes into the film. I knew who pretty-much everyone was, what they were going to do, and how the film was going to end up. The comedy was equally predictable, with the only real humor coming from the villain. I laughed exactly once during the film (about 30 minutes in). It might have been twice, if not for the best joke in the film having been spoiled in the trailer (the bit about the dinosaur having short arms and a big head). Without an emotional investment in the characters, none of the action sequences or plot twists held any real impact. The most interesting character in the film (I kid you not) was a hat. There's no real emotion in the film until about the last five minutes, but that's only because the ending, as formulaic as it was, was well executed.

 

I'm always a little torn writing reviews like this, since I know a lot of the people that work on these films. They aren't stupid people. They're funny, talented and smart. But for whatever reasons and circumstances, that rarely seems to get on the screen. Maybe with different people making those all-important decisions at Disney now, that might change. Bolt (formerly American Dog) will be the first of the films that was gutted by Pixar and remade in their own image. We'll just have to wait and see if it makes a difference.

 

(That is a big toilet.)

 

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