Disney Movie Challenge: Meet the Robinsons (2007)

 Disney Movie Challenge

Meet the Robinsons (2007)

WHAT IS THE DISNEY MOVIE CHALLENGE: With Disney+ making available almost all of their films from the vault I thought it was a good time to watch all the theatrically released feature length Disney Studio Animated films. That’s a lot of qualifications so what does it all mean? It must be a film developed and released under the Walt Disney Animation Studios (so no PIXAR or Tim Burton stop motion films). Must have been released in theaters (no direct to video releases). And feature length (no shorts that played prior to the features). Currently there are 59 films. Starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 going to Raya and the Last Dragon in 2021.

Starting with Meet the Robinsons we enter a transition period for Disney.  The 2000’s saw Disney struggle and be overshadowed by animated features from Pixar and Dreamworks.  While Meet the Robinsons wasn't a huge success you feel Disney starting to right the ship and the beginning of the second Disney Renaissance.  

Meet the Robinsons is about an orphan twelve year old named Lewis.  Lewis fancies himself as an inventor and has some crazy gadgets.  But, it is these gadgets that seem to keep him from getting adopted.  When he enters a science fair with a machine he thinks will show memories (he hopes to find out why his mother left him for adoption) a man in a bowler hat sabotages his machine and causes it to fail.  Luckily there is another kid (Wilbur Robinson) who wants to help him succeed.  Wilbur tells Lewis he is from the future and to prove it he takes Lewis to the future with him  There Lewis meets the rest of the quirky Robinsons.  They welcome him to their home and for the first time Lewis feels like he has a family.  When the family finds out he is from the past they tell him he can’t stay and must go back to his time.  Meanwhile the man with the bowler hat is still trying to steal Lewis’ invention so he can claim it as his own.  The bowler hat is revealed to be a sentient robot called Doris who has nefarious plans of her own.  There are a bunch of twists that follow but in the end Lewis goes back to the science fair and proves his memory scanner works and everything works out. 

 As I mentioned earlier Meet the Robinsons came during a transition period for Disney. After Jeffrey Katzenberg left to start Dreakworks in 1994 Disney Animation went through a number of leaders.  After Disney bought Pixar in 2006 John Lasseter, who was Vice President of Pixar, was named Chief Creative Office of both Disney Feature Animations and Pixar animations.  At the time he took over Meet the Robinsons was already in development.  When he screened the film for the first time he told them the villain needed to be more scary.  60% of the movie was then reworked adding Doris the hat and a dinosaur chase at the end.  

Meet the Robinsons is the second (third if you count The Wild) fully computer animated film for Disney.  While it’s definitely an improvement it still feels like early computer animated films.  By this point Pixar and Dreamworks had come a long way and making cutting edge films and the Disney team still had a lot of catching up to do. To give you an idea, the animation in this movie reminded me more of Jimmy Neutron which came out in 2001 and less like Ratatouille which came out the same year as this film.  But given the film has an overall retro look it doesn’t take too much away.  

What I really liked about the movie is the writing.  It has funny and clever dialogue that feels like early Lord and Miller style.  I even had to look up if they were involved but they weren’t.  One of my favorite lines from the film is “Knock ‘em dead...that was a figure of speech don’t kill anyone” right before Lewis turns his invention on at the science fair.  The biggest problem I had with the movie is the time travel.  Time travel is always a tricky aspect and very rarely works for me. Each time travel movie has their own time travel rules but this one just doesn’t have any.  They don’t try to explain anything and if you think too much about things it will make your head hurt.  The most egregious part in my opinion is when**SPOILER ALERT** Lewis tells Doris that he just won’t invent her in the future and that solves the problem.   As long as we are doing spoilers the reveal that Lewis is Wilbur's dad is kind of odd because Wilbur's dad is named Cornelius. While that is kind of explained it still feels dumb.

Overall: Not a super memorable movie but has some fun parts with good dialogue.  It also moves along quickly and keeps you from getting bored.  I have my issues with time travel movies and this movie doesn’t even try to explain any time travel paradoxes so best to just roll with it.  

Random Facts

The character of Lewis was voiced by both Daniel Hansen and Jordan Fry. Daniel Hansen voiced Lewis at the beginning of the film's production, and when the studio needed Lewis' lines changed, they had Jordan Fry re-dub many segments

Director Stephen Anderson wanted to direct the movie because he was also adopted and connected with the character Lewis.

Only Disney Animated film to be scored by Danny Elfman.  While I usually enjoy his scores this one wasn't very memorable.

Disney Movie Challenge: Dinosaur (2000)

 

 Disney Movie Challenge

Dinosaur (2000)

WHAT IS THE DISNEY MOVIE CHALLENGE: With Disney+ making available almost all of their films from the vault I thought it was a good time to watch all the theatrically released feature length Disney Studio Animated films. That’s a lot of qualifications so what does it all mean? It must be a film developed and released under the Walt Disney Animation Studios (so no PIXAR or Tim Burton stop motion films). Must have been released in theaters (no direct to video releases). And feature length (no shorts that played prior to the features). Currently there are 59 films. Starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 going to Raya and the Last Dragon in 2021.

Dinosaur is a project that was long in development.  Originally conceived in 1986 on the set of Robocop between special effects artist Phil Tippett and director Paul Verhoeven.   They originally planned to do a stop motion movie with puppets and miniatures.   The movie was to have no speaking dinosaurs and end with all the dinosaurs dying in a meteor strike.  The development was long and costly. After Disney learned that Jurassic Park would be released using CGI they reassessed their plan. Verhoeven and Tippett eventually left the film and a variety of directors (including David W. Allen who just made Puppet Master II) were brought in to work on it before the movie ultimately ended up going to the animation department to become the first Disney Computer Animated Film.  There were also a lot of changes to avoid being compared to other movies that came before. For example, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, The Land Before Time, and Armageddon (they scrapped a meteor scene in space because it was too similar to Armageddon).

The plot is kind of bizarre but pretty straight forward.  An orphaned iguanodon, Aladar, is raised by a family of lemurs.  When their island is destroyed by a meteor shower they escape and join a herd of random other dinosaurs as they look for the fertile nesting grounds.  Leading the herd is no-nonsense Kron who takes no interest in anyone who can’t keep up.  Aladar takes sympathy on a few of the slow elderly dinosaurs that Kron leaves behind.  Being chased by carnotaurus’, Aladar and his group seek refuge in a cave. After getting trapped they find a shortcut to the nesting grounds.  Aladar then runs back to Kron to tell him the way he is going is impossible to cross.  Kron reluctant to admit he is wrong fights Aladar but then a carnotaurus shows up and the group must now fight the predator.  

While officially Disney’s first computer animated it felt behind the times.  Pixar had already released Toy Story, A Bug's Life, and Toy Story 2, and Dreamworks had released Antz. The one thing that Dinosaur did differently was they superimposed the computer animation on real world photos.  They used tropical locals like Hawaii and Tahiti for the jungle sequences.  Unfortunately I think using real world backgrounds highlights how fake the computer animation looks.  I know that comparing it to current animation is not fair but I really feel like even in 2000 it had already started to age.   

The biggest problem with the movie are the characters.  First thing is it’s hard to get over the initial idea that a pack of lemurs will raise an iguanodon.  Once you get past that mental hurdle the rest of the movie does a poor job of character development.  Aladar is pretty one note. Once we meet him he is already a good guy and always does the right thing.  There is some attempt at a romance with one of the female iguanodons in the herd but that feels forced.  Kron is self centered the whole movie and doesn’t change.  There is one character, Bruton, that does have a small arc and learns that sometimes it’s better to help others, but he doesn’t play a big role in the film.  

The voice cast is pretty good with what they are given to do.  Alfre Woodard and Ossie Davis are great as the parents of the lemurs.  They both give a calm confidence and you really feel the  love they have for other characters.  Samuel Wright, who was the voice of Sebastian in The Little Mermaid, provides the voice of Kron in this one.  He completely nails the role even if it’s just one note.  D.B Sweeney as the voice of Aladar and while nothing spectacular does a fine job as showing his kind and thoughtfulness.  

Overall: A boring film that doesn’t make you care about the characters.  In an effort to avoid similarities to other films they kind of made a bland film.  Animation might have looked passable in 2000 but now doesn’t look good at all. There were some scenes in a cave that were so dark you could hardly make out what was going on. 

Random Facts

Second Disney Animated Film to be rated PG. First was The Black Cauldron.

Said to have the largest number of deaths in any Disney Animated film.  

Originally was going to have a mosasaurus but was removed from the finished film. 

Controversial decisions to have the dinosaurs talk. Iguanodons have duck bills. So when it was decided they would talk they had to change them to lips. 

Wasn't considered Disney Canon till 2008. Still not considered Disney Canon in Europe (The Wild is considered Canon there but not in the U.S.)

First film that James Newton Howard scored for Disney. He would go on to score many of the films in the coming decades.