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Meet the Robinsons
Director: Stephen J. Anderson
Writers: Michelle Bochner (screenplay) and Stephen J. Anderson (screenplay)
I have to say it, I am a sucker for 3D, well, I am a sucker for the
IDEA of 3D anyway. It is sad though that the idea of the 3D has
remained pretty much just that. An idea. Sure 3D has (more or less)
worked since "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" in that the cinema
screen has achieved the extra dimension of depth ... but in my case it
has always done this at the cost of giving me a headache and making
my eyes feel like marbles. But, like I said, I am a sucker for 3D so
when I heard that "Meet the Robinsons" was in a new 3D process... I
trotted off to the cinema money in my sweaty hand and hope springing
eternal.
As far as I was concerned, 3D was the real star of "Meet the
Robinsons" it was the only reason I was going and the idea of seeing
a computer generated film filled me with the same excitement as a
trip to a dentist. Computer characters really do nothing for me. I
watched the first two "Toy Story" films under sufferance and... sort of
... like the second one ... and I quite like "Monsters Inc" but by and
large computer animated films strike me as being flaccid, sad copies
of real life made by people with little understanding of anything but
computers and less taste. So I was pleasantly surprised by "Meet the
Robinsons," on two fronts.
Firstly. The 3D. This is far and away the best process I have seen so
far. It is light years ahead of the red/green glasses of my youth,
and hundreds of times better than the vast battery operated headsets
at the IMAX theatre. It is simple, and it works. While my eyes felt
like marbles at the end of the film the marbles in question were
large ones and not overly scratched. In fact "Meet the Robinsons"
goes down in history as being the first 3D film I have seen that
didn't give me a headache and the 3D was simultaneously the most
convincing. As far as the 3D goes... 10/10
Second. The film, "Meet the Robinsons" is actually a science fiction
film, done as a computer-generated animation aimed at children and at
adults so depraved by popular culture that they have remained
children. It finds the balance point between children's film and pop
culture and balances there, perfectly throughout its length, never
being so complex that a child of average intelligence could not
follow it and never failing to deliver sufficient references to other
films that pedants would be short of something to crow about
afterwards. "Meet the Robinsons" is above all, product, but it wears
this label proudly on its sleeve as this is quality product, it does
not aim high, but it delivers on all fronts and is miles better than
the recent PIXAR offerings "Finding Nemo" and "Cars" ... To put another
way, with "Meet the Robinsons" I got the distinct feeling that the
script was conceived and written long before the collectable toy sets
had been designed.
The story of "Meet the Robinsons" is a time travel story which owes a
lot to stories such as Robert A. Heinlein's "All You Zombies"(1) and
Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" and a definite debt of gratitude
to "The Proud Robot" by Lewis Padgett. It is, in no uncertain terms,
a science fiction film and as far as the plot goes a better than
average one. It is consistently interesting, worthy of intellectual
investigation and delivers medium levels of suspense and comedy. It's
a good science fiction film. The fact that it is animated is almost
secondary to the point. This film lives due to its script. "Nemo" and
"Cars" died for the same reason. As far as the film goes, 8/10
As a whole "Meet the Robinsons" is a very satisfying experience. The
plot is engaging, the jokes are funny, the ideas are interesting, and
the film delivers moments of amazing beauty in high quality 3D. It is
product, to be sure, but "Meet the Robinsons" is more a film than any
other animated product I have seen so far. Highly recommended.
8/10
(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2007.
(1) http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~mfedder/zombies.html
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