Meet The Robinsons

Time travelling animated Disney adventure about a young boy searching for family life in the future. Orphan Lewis is a twelve-year-old inventor who has created a 'Memory Scanner' that he hopes can capture memories of his real mother. Stolen from him by the 'Bowler Hat Guy', a figure from the future, Lewis is helped by the mysterious Wilbur Robinson, who transports him to his future world in his time-machine. While staying with Wilbur's eccentric family, Lewis soon gets the chance to track down his invention and save both the day, and the future. Developing positive self-esteem and persevering in the face of difficulties are fundamental parts of growing up, but when 12-year old orphan Lewis (Daniel Hansen and Jordan Fry) can't seem to get adopted or make his inventions work despite repeated efforts, he begins to seriously doubt himself and his abilities as an inventor. A CGI picture by Disney with great animation and a fresh vision of what the future might look like, Meet The Robinsons follows Lewis from his lonesome days at the orphanage to his crushing failure at the school science fair when his newly invented memory scanner won't work. Then, an odd boy named Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman) shows up to warn Lewis about the mysterious "Bowler Hat Guy" (Stephen J Anderson) lurking around the science fair, an evil man Wilbur claims is from the future. The next thing Lewis knows, he and Wilbur are on route to the future via time machine. Once there, Lewis meets the very quirky, extended Robinson family with whom he feels oddly at home. As the search for the Bowler Hat Man and his constant companion Doris (Ethan Sandler) becomes more and more dangerous, the Robinson family becomes crucial in keeping Lewis safe. In the end, Lewis returns to the present with a whole new inner strength, a sense of his place in the world, the knowledge that his actions directly affect others, and an optimistic determination to "keep moving forward." While comparisons with the Back to the Future films are inevitable, Meet the Robinsons stands apart from its predecessors as its own, thoroughly entertaining family film. --Tami Horiuchi