Meet the Robinsons

Watched this animation after surf's up. Sponsored by Mr Jeremy Tai too! Thanks heaps! Kinda like it, about back 2 da future thingy. Like it!!!!!!Meet the Robinsons is a computer-animated film and the 46th animated feature produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures.
Plot:
The movie opens with a woman approaching an orphanage at night in the rain, holding her baby. On the orphanage steps, she kisses her baby and then puts it down, but suddenly looks up as if she’s heard a noise. Mildred, the head of the orphanage, answers a knock at the door and finds the baby.

As years go by, Lewis, the baby, has apparently become an avid inventor and is actually a genius – he teaches a class and takes college classes.

His roommate, “Goob”, is tiredly helping Lewis make yet another invention in his room.

Lewis is always building and keeps Goob up every night, which makes Goob’s little league baseball career suffer. Mildred comes to the room and tells Lewis that there is another family coming to adopt him. During the meeting, Lewis tries to show off his invention, a machine to automatically make the perfect PB&J. However, it explodes and the family leaves in a huff.

Mildred finds Lewis on the roof where he always goes to think, and when Lewis says that no one, not even his own mother, wants him. Mildred tells Lewis that he doesn't know if that's true and that it's possible that his mother wanted to keep him and couldn't. Lewis gets an inspiration:

he’ll invent a machine to look back into his memories and see his mother

Lewis invents this machine over the next couple of days and Goob is unable to sleep. He complains to Mildred about this and says that he won’t be able to keep awake during the baseball game. Lewis heads to the school science fair, telling Mildred that he’s given up on being adopted and will only settle for his real family.

A hyperactive judge named Dr. Krunklehorn is looking at all the science experiments along with science teacher Mr. Willerstein.

Lewis is approached by a thirteen-year-old boy named Wilbur Robinson who claims he is a time cop from the future and that a man with a bowler hat stole a time machine, came to this time, and is after Lewis.

Lewis doesn’t believe him and Wilbur gets distracted, allowing Lewis to set up. However, the sinister Bowler Hat Man

lurks in the shadows nearby and sends Doris, a robotic hat with mechanical arms, to sabotage Lewis’s machine. As Lewis begins demonstrating the machine,
Wilbur spots the bowler hat and tries to stop Lewis but the machine explodes and the science fair is in chaos. Lewis runs out and leaves his machine, which the Bowler Hat Man steals.

At the orphanage, Lewis goes up on the roof, crushed. Wilbur appears and tells Lewis to go back to the science fair and fix the machine, but Lewis refuses. Lewis then says that if Wilbur can prove he’s from the future, Lewis will go back to the science fair and fix the machine. Wilbur agrees then pushes Lewis off the roof onto an invisible flying time machine, and uses it to take them to the future.

Soaring through a world of flying cars, clean cities, robots, and machines, Lewis finally believes Wilbur. But Lewis then says that he wants Wilbur to use the time machine to take him back to the day he was left at the orphanage so he can stop his mother from leaving him. When Wilbur refuses, Lewis grabs the steering wheel and causes the machine to crash. Wilbur is devastated and explains that there are only two time machines in existence, both made by Wilbur’s dad, and now one is destroyed while the Bowler Hat Man has the other. The two make a deal:

if Lewis fixes the time machine, Wilbur will use it to take him back to see his mother.

They smuggle the machine into Wilbur’s garage where Carl, the neurotic family robot, yells at Wilbur.

They tell Lewis to not leave the garage and hide his hair under a hat covered in fruit and tell him to fix the machine before Wilbur’s father returns in the morning. In private, Carl says that Wilbur shouldn’t have brought Lewis back, and that because he did there is a break in time and Wilbur could be erased. Downstairs, Lewis accidentally steps into an elevator and gets transported out of the house.

Back in the past, the Bowler Hat Man is talking with his hat, Doris. The two plan to take credit for inventing the memory machine, one of the things to do on Bowler Hat Man’s written checklist. That also includes:

• steal a time machine,
  
• steal an invention, and
  
• pretend that he invented it.

However, because he doesn't know how to use the machine, Bowler Hat Man is thrown out on his face. Bowler Hat Man goes to Lewis’s room to kidnap him (another on his list of things to do) but finds an injured Goob there instead. He fell asleep during the baseball game while on the field, which cost them the game, and the kids on his team beat him up for it, though the coach assured him to let it go. Bowler Hat Man gets very emotional and gives Goob a speech about holding the sadness inside and converting it to rage. On the roof, Doris finds traces of Wilbur’s time machine and the two head to the future to track down Lewis.

Meanwhile, Lewis is wandering around the Robinson house. He meets Lefty, the octopus butler, Two very odd twins named Spike and Dimitri (who live in flower pots and own the doorbells and have a doorbell ringing competition) and Grandpa Bud, a crazy old man looking for his dentures and wearing his clothes backwards.

Bud takes Lewis on a tour of the house while Wilbur goes on a frantic search for them. In the house, Lewis meets Uncle Gaston, shooting himself from a cannon to race Aunt Billie’s life-size toy train, Cousin Tallulah, wearing a skyscraper dress, who is fighting with her brother Laszlo, flying around on a jetpack and painting the walls, Billy’s husband, the obese Uncle Joe, who sits in his chair all day, Uncle Art delivering pizzas in a flying saucer like a superhero, Bud’s wife, Lucille, who dances to disco music, and Uncle Fritz, a spacey middle-aged guy, who argues with his wife – a ventriloquist puppet named Petunia.

Finally, Lewis meets Wilbur’s friendly mother, Franny,

conducting her frog jazz band.

The lead frog, Frankie, is wearing Bud’s teeth.

The entire family loves Lewis, but Wilbur sneaks in and takes him downstairs. Wilbur’s father is a master inventor and invented practically everything, coining the motto

“Keep moving forward”

Lewis attempts to fix the time machine but it breaks again.

Meanwhile, Bowler Hat Man and Doris try to sneak into the house. Doris spawns a miniature bowler hat which the Bowler Hat Man controls. Mini-Doris finds and takes control of Frankie.

During dinner, Lewis pretends to be an exchange student from Canada. Franny is extremely nice and Lewis finds himself loving everyone very much, but when Franny goes to remove Lewis’s hat, Wilbur initiates a kung-fu style meatball fight between Franny and Gaston. Lewis says that he is an orphan and wishes that he had a family like the Robinsons.

For dessert, Carl is about to serve PB&J sandwiches with a machine similar to the one Lewis made earlier. When it breaks, Wilbur decides to get Lewis to fix it to raise his confidence, but Lewis fails – and the entire family applauds the failure, saying that a failure means you can try again. Frankie enters, but he is just a small frog and can’t seize Lewis. Bowler Hat Man gets rid of Frankie and sees a hedge shaped like a T-Rex in the garden. He takes the time machine back to the past and returns with a real one. The entire family attempts to stop the T-Rex,

but it turns the tables and corners Wilbur and Lewis. The T-Rex is about to eat Wilbur but Lewis throws a shovel in his mouth to stop him.

Everyone is now slightly injured but also in love with Lewis. Wilbur is worried, and Lewis thanks everyone. But when says he has to go, Franny breaks down and says that she wants to adopt Lewis . Wilbur quickly knocks Lewis’s hat off and when everyone sees his hair, they are horrified. Franny takes back her adoption offer at once and says Lewis has to go. Wilbur explains the situation with the time machines and also blurts out that he never meant to take Lewis back to his mother. Lewis runs away, saying he won’t trust the Robinsons ever again. Everyone is furious with Wilbur, including Franny, who says that he is "grounded until he dies". Lewis is approached by the Bowler Hat Man and Doris and told that if he fixes the memory machine, they’ll take him to see his mother. Wilbur tries to stop him but Lewis, still angry with him, flies off with Bowler Hat Man.

In a dark room somewhere, Lewis repairs the memory machine and explains how to use it. He is then tied up by Doris and Bowler Hat Man turns on the lights – they are in Lewis’s old room at the orphanage. Bowler Hat Man reveals that he is in fact Goob. After Goob lost his baseball game, he went into long-term depression and remained an orphan. Over the years, Goob decided that his bad life was Lewis’s fault. At the same time, Wilbur’s father invented Doris but Doris malfunctioned so he shut her down. Doris escaped and found Goob. The two of them then decided to steal Mr. Robinson’s time machine and go back in time to steal Lewis’s first working machine. Lewis suddenly figures out why they are attacking him to hurt Mr. Robinson – Lewis IS Mr. Robinson. This is why Franny recognized him and said that he had to go back to the past and also why Wilbur believes Lewis can fix the time machine. If Lewis doesn’t invent the memory machine, the future will be destroyed. Lewis realizes that by not letting go of the past and not looking towards the future, Goob’s anger destroyed him; the same way Lewis was letting his anger about his mother ruin his own life.

Carl and Wilbur arrive at the orphanage and rescue Lewis and the memory machine. Lewis then tells Wilbur that he knows that he is Wilbur's father. They are friends again but just as they reach the Robinson house, Doris shows up and attacks Carl. Bowler Hat Man steals the memory machine and goes back to the past. Bowler Hat Man manages to successfully demonstrate the memory machine. The time line is broken and Wilbur is suddenly sucked out of existence. The future is radically changed and Lewis finds the Robinson house empty. On a television screen, Lewis sees that after taking the credit for the memory machine, Bowler Hat Man mass produces Doris. The Doris hats then destroy the cities, enslave all of humanity, and Doris attacks Goob.

Possessed by Doris hats, the Robinsons appear and attack Lewis. Lewis climbs into the time machine as the family tries to push it off a ledge. Lewis suddenly figures out how to fix the machine and flies away, but the entire Robinson house, now a giant Doris, chases after him. Millions of Doris robots also chase after him. Cornered by the Robinsons, Lewis angrily says

I wish I’d never invented that stupid hat!

He suddenly realizes what to do and flies into the past to the boardroom where Goob is about to take credit for Lewis’s invention. Lewis tells Bowler Hat Man about Doris' plan and Doris lunges at Lewis. However, Lewis looks at her and says

I’m never going to invent you.

Doris dissolves into nothingness.

Taking Bowler Hat Man with him, Lewis returns to the future and sees it rebuilding itself. The Robinsons are restored and Wilbur and Carl are restored. Lewis explains and tells Wilbur to adopt Bowler Hat Man, but Bowler Hat Man is gone. Lewis looks down and sees Bowler Hat Man’s checklist with all the previous objectives crossed out, but there is a new entry, a question mark.

Lewis reunites with the Robinsons. He is happy to have found his family at last. And Lewis' future self, Cornelius returns. He takes Lewis to his lab and we see the tremendous success Lewis will become. Lewis climbs back into the time machine with Wilbur and promises to make things right. He says goodbye to the Robinsons, but Wilbur goes to the night Lewis' mother left him at the orphanage. He gets out of the time machine and is about to talk to his mother as she puts the baby down, but stops, realizing that he already has a family. He slips on the stairs and hides – that moment during the opening when the mother thought she heard a noise. The mother leaves and Lewis knocks on the door of the orphanage.

Lewis returns to the day of the science fair and says goodbye (with a big loving hug) to Wilbur, but says that he will never forget him. Wilbur jokingly tells Lewis that he’ll will keep coming back until he gets things right. On the way to the science fair, Lewis stops by Goob’s baseball game and wakes him up in time to catch the final out and preserve the win for his team. Goob's a hero. At the fair, Lewis demonstrates his machine to Dr. Krunklehorn again, but this time it works. Images are displayed of her wedding – to Bud. Lewis realizes that Lucille is Dr. Krunklehorn in the future, his adoptive mother. At the same time he bumps into a young Franny, who says that she is training her frogs to sing but no one believes she’ll do it. A young Uncle Gaston asks Lewis if he can write a story about him.

Everything is now fixed. Lewis is adopted by Lucille and Bud and leaves Mildred and Goob, now a good friend (who is about to get adopted himself) at the orphanage. They move into a large observatory which will one day be the Robinson residence. Lewis sees the empty room that will be filled with all his inventions and gets to work building the robot that will one day be Carl.

Overall rating: /5