Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Meet the Robinsons

I have to be honest, I had no idea what to expect with this one. This movie came out during that period of time where I was largely indifferent to the fact that a new Disney Movie was coming out and as far as this movie in particular goes, I never really saw much in the way of advertising. While I never heard any negative things about the film, it just was one of those films that no one ever really talked about. Truth be told, I was actually quite curious about this one as it’s rare that I go into one of these films completely blind. Like I said, I had no idea what to expect but let me tell you, it sure as hell wasn’t this. This just might be the most balls to the wall insane film I have yet watched for Deep Dive Disney. I have encountered films that have come close to breaking my sanity in the past. Some due to being horribly racist like Peter Pan, some due to due to being aggressively uninteresting like Oliver and Company, and even some due to just, really, really bad, like Brother Bear. However, this one stands out since while this one made me feel as though I was watching someone’s LSD nightmare, I actually still came away from this one with positive feelings. It’s not so much the movie is bad, but just that it’s so unbelievably and relentlessly strange. You ever heard the phrase “Throw Shit Against the Wall and see what sticks”? Well, this movie felt like they threw literally everything against the wall regardless of whether it would stick or not. I couldn’t even take a second to catch my breath as the film kept throwing one inexplicable thing after another right at my head like a gatling gun loaded up with bullets made of pure, concentrated madness. So, what exactly is Meet the Robinsons? The fuck if I know, but the story goes a little something like this. The film centers around Lewis, an orphan child with a genius level intellect who dreams of being a great inventor. However, his inventions often cause havoc and make it difficult for potential parents to want to adopt him. When Lewis’s latest invention, a machine that allows one to view repressed memories (which Lewis hopes to use to find his long lost mother) is sabotaged during a local science fair, Lewis begins to believe that he’s worthless and gives up on ever being adopted. Sounds pretty pedestrian so far, right? Well, here’s where the movie takes a hard left turn into crazy town. A kid named Wilbur Robinson, who claims to be from the future, shows up out of nowhere and tells Lewis that a mysterious creep in a high-tech Bowler Hat named Doris has stolen one of only two time machines in existence and is targeting Lewis for unknown reasons. To keep the Bowler Hat Guy off Lewis’s trail, Wilbur hides him in the future where Lewis well… meets the Robinsons. The Robinsons all seem certifiably insane, but also very kind and welcoming, giving Lewis the sense of family he’s always wanted. While Lewis is exposed to the Baskin Robinsons thirty-one flavors of mind fuckery, Bowler Hat Guy has tracked Lewis to the future and attempts to kidnap him. Soon enough, it’s up to Lewis to stop a sinister plot that could prevent this future from ever coming to pass. It’s undoubtedly one of the strangest movies I’ve ever watched for Deep Dive Disney. Join me as I attempt to make sense of, Meet the Robinsons.

Main Character:

As I said, Lewis is an orphan, abandoned by his mother as a baby for reasons that are never revealed. While Lewis often acts happy and upbeat, you can tell deep down, it eats away at him that his mother abandoned him and he worries that it was because there was something wrong with him. In essence, this abandonment by his mother, regardless of why she chose to do so, has inadvertently damaged Lewis’s sense of self-worth, and his constant rejection by prospective parents has further eroded it over the years. I actually relate to Lewis on a lot of levels. He’s eccentric and very intelligent and doesn’t feel that he should have to change in order to gain the favor of others. Instead, he’d rather gain the acceptance of others for who he is. However, despite this, Lewis appears to have very low self-esteem. After his inventions constantly fail, he starts to think that he’s not good enough to be adopted. It’s actually a pretty interesting look at depression and low self-esteem that we’ll be discussing further in the story section. I guess now’s as good a time as any to discuss the big twist since the movie makes little to no effort to conceal it. It turns out, Lewis is actually Cornelius Robinson, Wilbur’s father and the head of the Robinson family. One thing I really liked about the reveal is that the movie outright says that the future isn’t set in stone and knowing that his future self is this insanely successful genius inventor gives him something to work towards and aspire to, again something that ties into the deeper themes of the film. While I think they could have done a better job keeping the reveal a secret, it still works okay for the film and acts as the set up for some clever jokes. Overall, I found Lewis to be a compelling and relatable protagonist and an oasis of sanity in this desert of madness.

Villain:

My first impression of Bowler Hat Guy is mainly the fact that the filmmakers clearly wanted this character to be played by Jim Carrey. He’s not, he’s actually voiced by the film’s writer and director, Stephen Anderson but if you pay attention to the characters speech patterns and mannerisms, you can tell this character was written with Jim Carrey in mind. Hell, for much of the movie I was reminded of Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik from the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie, given that he is a manic Snidely Whiplash looking creep who utilizes tiny robots. Truth be told, I actually really enjoyed this character. Definitely not one of the top tier Disney villains, but a fun one nonetheless. He’s clearly trying to put up this façade of being an evil genius but invariably ends up looking like a short-sighted idiot at every turn, especially when his minions, even those under mind control, tell him he didn’t think his plans through. However, things begin to make sense when you learn that the bowler hat guy is actually the future version of Michael “Goob” Yagoobian, Lewis’s roommate at the orphanage. You see, when Lewis pulled an all-nighter working on his science fair project, Goob didn’t get any sleep either and nodded off during a crucial moment in his big baseball game as a result. Goob went on to blame Lewis for this, to the point where it became his obsession. The more Goob would hear about Lewis becoming a successful inventor, the more that resentment devolved into outright hatred and a deep desire for vengeance. It was around this time that Goob met Doris, or The DOR-15, a failed invention of future Lewis. See, Lewis designed Doris as a “Helping Hat,” but she tried to enslave humanity as robots are want to do. What’s especially interesting about this is that Bowler Hat guy is essentially a twist villain within a twist villain. The whole movie builds up Goob as the big bad, but in actuality, the real main villain was Doris all along, manipulating Goob so she can carry out her intention of enslaving humanity. See, when Goob stole Lewis’s invention, he planned to patent it for himself, thus preventing future Lewis from ever becoming a great success. Once Goob takes credit for Lewis’s invention, he will then green light the mass production of thousands of Doris’s, allowing Doris to take over the globe, Goob himself being completely unaware of that last part of the plan. Overall, I enjoyed these characters, but I do have one or two nitpicks. First is that I don’t really like how Doris is ultimately defeated. Young Lewis just kind of decides that he won’t invent her and she instantaneously disappears in a cloud of dust. I don’t know, it just kind of feels like a lame cop-out way of defeating the big bad. Second, the film establishes that Goob keeps a checklist of things to do in order to get back at Lewis. At the end of the movie after all has been said and done, we see a sad Goob walking away, Goob finding the items on the checklist crossed out save for one box with a question mark next to it, symbolizing that he now has no idea what to do with his life now that he’s no longer hellbent on revenge. It was actually a surprisingly poignant scene. I actually found myself wondering how Goob would choose to atone. Would he go to work for Lewis? Would he try to pursue his baseball dreams? Would he find some new calling in life? Well, the answer turns out to be none of the above because Lewis goes back and makes sure Goob stays awake for the Baseball game, ensuring that Bowler Hat Guy would never come into existence. I’m glad Lewis went back and made things right with his friend, but as we’ll discuss in our story section, this development flies in the face of the film’s overall message. Still, I had fun with these characters and Goob gave me a lot of laughs.

Side Characters:

Well, it’s about time. What say we, you know, meet the Robinsons. The obvious starting point is Wilbur Robinson, the boy who comes from the future to save Lewis, later revealed to be his future son. Like the rest of his family, Wilbur is a bit eccentric, rebellious but also possessing a sense of responsibility (since it was his fault that Goob got his hands on the time machine in the first place. I like how, despite obviously having to mislead him about his true nature, the two end up forming this cute bond of friendship. As for the rest of the Robinson Family, they’re all too crazy and too numerous to list one by one so I’ll just hit you with them the same way the movie does, rapid fire! Bud Robinson is a potentially senile weirdo who wears his clothes backwards even at his own wedding, Lucille Robinson is a caffeine junkie who loves to dance. Franny Robinson is one tough momma who’s made it her life’s work to teach frogs how to sing Sinatra, Uncle Gaston has a weird obsession with cannons, Uncle Art is a pizza delivery man who thinks he’s a superhero voiced by Adam West of all people, Fritz is an Ed Grimley looking fellow who is under the impression that he’s married to a hand puppet (insert your own masturbation joke here). Lazlo Robinson is a painter who uses a jetpack. Joe is the morbidly obese Uncle for whom it is considered an emergency when he doesn’t get his peanut butter on toast. Billie Robinson is Joe’s wife who drives full-sized trains through the house. And weirdest of all, Spike and Dimitri, a pair of twins who spend all day squatting in potted plants taking bets on who rings what doorbell. The weirdest thing about them is that no one, even the Robinson family, seems to know which side of the family they’re related to. It’s a colorful collection of weirdos that give the Addams Family a run for their money.

Memorable Scenes:

It comes as no surprise that the scene where we meet the Robinsons is pretty wild and wacky, but for me, one of the more memorable scenes in the film actually happens right after where Lewis is talking to Wilbur and trying to make sense of the jagged thornbush that is the Robinson family tree. One particularly funny bit is that at this point, we haven’t gotten the big reveal of Wilbur’s father’s identity yet so, to represent him, we get a photo-realistic picture of Tom Selleck who voices the older Lewis. The whole thing actually reminded me of something that happened in real life once. See, I come from a pretty big family myself. My mother has eight brothers and sisters, most of whom are married and counting myself and my brother there’s a grand total of nineteen cousins on that side of the family. When I told my best friend about this, he had a hard time keeping it straight and joked about getting a tattoo just so he could keep track of my family tree.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the scene where Bowler Hat Guy sicks a mind-controlled T-Rex on the Robinson Family and it’s unable to stop them because it has “A Big Head, and Little Arms”

Finally, there’s an especially powerful scene right at the end where Lewis finally is taken back to see his mother as Wilbur had promised him earlier. Even though this is what he’s always wanted, he’s learned over the course of his adventure that he doesn’t need this anymore and dwelling on the past will get him nothing. It’s actually a really sweet moment and further emphasizes the friendship between Wilbur and Lewis.

Story:

Lucky for me, this is one of those movies that essentially does my job for me and repeats the message of the film over and over again. The Robinson family motto and the message of the film is: “Keep Moving Forward.” Essentially, the message of this film is to not to dwell on the mistakes and failures of the past but learn from them and use them to move forward and better yourself. When Lewis’s invention failed at the science fair, he was on the verge of giving up. He needed to learn this in order to become the great man he saw himself as in the future. Now take Goob. Goob became obsessed with revenge because he couldn’t move past his failure and in the end, it drove him insane and nearly caused him to be party to the enslavement of the human race. That’s why I was so upset that Bowler Hat Guy was erased from existence since it basically robbed him of the ability to move forward. The message is beyond heavy handed and is spelled out for you nearly every five minutes but it’s a nice one nonetheless. The film even decides to hammer it home extra hard by ending with a quote from the man himself, Walt Disney. "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." Nicely done.

The Dark Disney Factor:

Well, there’s a point in this movie where Lewis refers to his future wife as “Mom.” That was pretty weird. I mean, I don’t know what kind of sex life Lewis and Franny have, and Frankly I think it’s something better left not explored in a kid’s movie.

There’s also the bit where Doris’s evil plan finally comes to fruition and the future begins changing around Lewis. Frankly, the whole dystopian landscape is a nightmare. First, we see Wilbur cease to exist right in front of Lewis, then the bright and optimistic future transforms into… well, I cannot believe I’m saying these words in sequence, The Bowler Hat Apocalypse. I’ve had to say some pretty odd phrases over the course of this retrospective, and while “Potato Sex” still takes the cake, “Bowler Hat Apocalypse” is still pretty out there. And like I said, said apocalypse is a nightmare. The Robinson Family are all mind-controlled zombies and giant mechanical bowler hats patrol the landscape. It’s honestly more than a little frightening.

Final Thoughts: This movie is bonkers, but I honestly enjoyed it. It has a nice message, some great energy and a real feeling of optimism about it. The message of how one must keep moving forward despite one's failures is a great message for kids and adults. As Deep Dive Disney moves forward, next time we'll be finishing out the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy with At World's End.