PixarFan2006 wrote:I am probably going to rent this on Tuesday. I hope it will be better than Chicken Little.
No worries there. Personally, I felt
Meet the Robinsons outperformed pretty much every Disney theatrical feature made in at least the last decade (leaving out
Fantasia 2000, as you can't really compare that to a plot-driven movie).
It's no more a traditional Disney film than the titular clan could be considered a traditional family, however I think the company made a great choice in trying something new for this movie. It has a genuinely cute and touching story, great animation along with an interesting futuristic art deco direction for scenes set in 2037, a very likeable main character (boy genius characters can often be incredibly annoying... Wesley Crusher, for example), a somewhat sympathetic and comical anti-hero and a truly disturbed and disturbing (though somewhat non-traditional) villain. The score, though not Elfman's best, suits the film well, and does have its highlights. The two "pop" songs used during montage sequences also fit in pretty well, and don't come off as irritating the way these sometimes can.
The comedy style is kind of like a mix of
Airplane!,
Back to the Future with some pretty random non-gross-out
Family Guy thrown in. Refreshingly, it doesn't resort to stupid pop-culture jokes that will end up [badly] dating so many CG films that are being made these days. The jokes in MtR will be as funny 30 year from now (when a great deal of the film's action takes place) as they are today, which is also a staple of a quality Disney feature. Now let's just hope the real 2037 will be as colorful and bright as this movie predicts.
The only other Disney movies made post-1994 that I've particularly enjoyed were
Hercules,
Tarzan and
Lilo & Stitch... but none of them as much as MtR. It's the closest Disney has come in approaching what Pixar manages to do, and personally I enoyed MtR alot more than
Cars, which was my least favourite Pixar film to date.
The only shame is that you won't be able to see it in 3-D, as it was presented in theatres. That was probably the first time I'd been truly impressed by a 3-D presentation, where it didn't just feel like some cheap gimmick thrown in to attract crowds. Personally, I think that kind of presentation could be the future of theatrical movies. You need something to attract people away from their obscene 100" TVs, right... kind of similar to the introduction of widescreen in the 50s.
