Meet the Robinsons is a 2007 American animated science-fiction comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is loosely based on the 1990 children's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce. The film was directed by Stephen J. Anderson (in his feature directorial debut) and produced by Dorothy McKim, from a screenplay that Anderson co-wrote with Don Hall, Nathan Greno, Joe Mateo, Jon Bernstein, Michelle Spitz, and Aurian Redson. The film stars the voices of Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry, Wesley Singerman, Angela Bassett, Tom Selleck, Harland Williams, Laurie Metcalf, Nicole Sullivan, Adam West, Ethan Sandler, Tom Kenny, and Anderson. It follows an orphaned 12-year-old inventor, Lewis, who is desperate to be adopted. He meets Wilbur, a young time-traveler who takes him to the year 2037 to visit an eccentric family, the Robinsons. They must prevent a mysterious bowler-hatted man from changing Lewis' fate, and, by proxy, the future.
Meet the Robinsons began production in June 2004, under the working title A Day with Wilbur Robinson, and was initially planned for release in 2006. At the time of the production, Anderson was confirmed as director due to his personal connection to the main character Lewis, as they both grew up adopted. Disney originally planned to adapt Joyce's style, before it was decided to slightly rework the style due to his involvement stylistically in Blue Sky Studios' Robots. The animation crew had the challenge to animate CG humans, being inspired by Pixar's The Incredibles, while the inspiration for the film came from Disney animated classics, such as Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, and Peter Pan, as well as Warner Brothers cartoons, to capture the 1950s aesthetic. Disney's acquisition of Pixar in early 2006 led to nearly 60% of the film, including the villain and the ending, being scrapped and reworked. Danny Elfman provided the film's score, while artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Rob Thomas, The All-American Rejects and They Might Be Giants contributed to the film's soundtrack.
Meet the Robinsons premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on March 25, 2007, and was released in standard and Disney Digital 3-D formats in the United States on March 30. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise directed towards the animation and story. However, it was a box office bomb, grossing $169.3 million against a budget of $150 million.
Plot[]
Lewis is an aspiring 12-year-old inventor living in an orphanage residential house. His energy, eccentricity, and malfunctioning inventions scare off potential parents, so he works on a machine to scan his memory to locate his birth mother, who abandoned him at the orphanage when he was a baby. While taking the scanner to his school's science fair, Lewis meets 13-year-old Wilbur Robinson, a mysterious boy claiming he is from the future and needs to recover a time machine, which was stolen by a man wearing a bowler hat. Lewis tries to demonstrate the scanner, but it falls apart as a result of being sabotaged by the Bowler Hat Guy, throwing the science fair into chaos. Lewis leaves while the Bowler Hat Guy, with help from his robotic bowler hat Doris, steals the scanner, planning to pass it off as his own to an invention corporation; however, their plan fails when he cannot properly demonstrate it.
Wilbur meets up with Lewis and asks him to repair the scanner. Lewis demands proof that Wilbur is from the future, which he does by taking him in a second time machine to the year 2037, which is highly advanced technologically. Lewis realizes he can use the time machine to meet his mother, but a resulting argument causes them to crash. Lewis agrees to fix the time machine on the condition that Wilbur has to take him to visit his mother afterwards. At Wilbur's house, Lewis meets the rest of the eccentric Robinson family except for Wilbur's father Cornelius; the inventor of the time's technologies who is away on a business trip. Having followed Lewis to the future, the Bowler Hat Guy and Doris try to kidnap him, but the Robinsons drive them back. The Robinsons offer to adopt Lewis, but change their mind after learning he is from the past. Wilbur admits to lying to Lewis about taking him back to his mother, causing Lewis to run off.
The Bowler Hat Guy approaches Lewis and offers to take him to his mother if he fixes the memory scanner. Once he does, the Bowler Hat Guy betrays him and ties him up and reveals that Lewis is actually a younger version of Cornelius, and that he is an adult version of Lewis's roommate, Michael "Goob" Yagoobian. Because he was kept awake by Lewis's work on the scanner, Goob fell asleep during a Little League baseball game and failed to make an important catch, costing his team the championship. While everyone else quickly moved on with their lives, Goob became so consumed by his failure that he was never adopted. Doris is "DOR-15", one of Lewis's failed and abandoned inventions. They both blamed Lewis for their misfortunes and decided to ruin his life. After leaving Lewis in the future, they return to the past and successfully pitch the memory scanner.
It is revealed that Doris manipulated Goob, convincing him to mass-produce her in the past to enslave humanity, turning the future into a dystopia. After escaping the enslaved Robinsons and Doris models, Lewis repairs the time machine, confronts Doris in the past, and destroys her by promising to never invent her, restoring the future. At Lewis's request, Wilbur asks the adult Goob to join his family, but he flees in shame of his actions.
Lewis finally meets Cornelius, who explains that the memory scanner started their successful career and persuades Lewis to return to the science fair. Although Wilbur fulfills his promise and takes Lewis back to see the moment his mother abandoned him, Lewis chooses not to interfere, having realized he already has a family.
Wilbur drops Lewis off in his own time and says goodbye. En route to the fair, Lewis wakes up Goob in time for him to make the winning catch, averting him becoming the Bowler Hat Guy; he is later adopted by new parents. Back at the fair, Lewis asks for one more chance to demonstrate his scanner, which this time succeeds. Lewis is adopted by Lucille, one of the science fair judges, and her husband Bud, who nicknames him "Cornelius". Now with a clear view of his success, Lewis begins working towards his future.
"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." —