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Life & Arts

Audiences should ‘Meet the Robinsons'

Disney returns to its with roots by combining plot, 
ingenuity in animated film 

by CHRISTIAN PALMER
The Daily Cougar

From the get-go, Disney's latest picture is all about trying to get back to the style of the original Disney films. 

In keeping with the early Disney habit of basing features off novels, this one was adapted from William Joyce's A Day with Wilbur Robinson. 

Aside from being completely outrageous in actuality, the plot is moving to people of all ages, even though we have seen many of the same elements before. The lead, Lewis, is left at an orphanage when he is just a baby. The loneliness he experiences and the eventual desire to meet his birthmother act as a catapult for his lifelong creative spirit, and propel the invention of which he is most proud, a brain scanner.

It is obvious that there is a hint of Walt Disney's character in Lewis, who in the movie pretty much single-handedly builds the future and changes the world. 

Speaking of the futuristic world, the architecture of the city looks like it came straight out of the dreams of Walt Disney and people of the fifties. There are a few flying cars, time machines and that sort of thing. The people, who look much like characters out of The Incredibles, teleport and everything is clean and colorful.

For a long time, it seemed Disney had the market for kids' movies in the bag; now, in a world where the corporation has to compete with much to win its demographic's affections, Disney seems like it is trying to get back to its roots and figure out what exactly made it so appealing in the first place. 

For this experiment, they juggle with themes of the niftiness of imagination and ingenuity, discovering who you really are and strong family values. Walt Disney's personal mantra of "keep moving forward" is peppered through the entire film and this positive message, though perhaps a bit over-the-top for today's (even adult) audiences, should resonate well with children. Now is the time when they need this kind of encouragement the most and it is kind of refreshing to see it applied so liberally.

If nothing else then, we can all agree that Meet the Robinsons is, at the very least, a unique cinematic experience

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