Meet the Robinsons

We just saw Meet the Robinsons last night. It was actually really good. It was full of holes, but I saw what Lasseter did.

For those who don’t know, John Lasseter took over as the Disney Chief Creative Officer (the first animator to take the role since Walt himself). So John sat down with the Robinsons director when he took the job. Robinsons was just about finished. They had a 6 hour meeting, the director was told to redo about 60% of the movie, and the director said it was the hardest day of his life.

Well, the hard work paid off. Robinsons evokes a lot of the emotion that is found in the Pixar movies, and the quote at the end will give you chills. However, there are still holes; they are all because of the story and the fact that they pulled the story out of a kid’s book (but so did Shrek).

(1) There was just too much weirdness. If Pixar was going to create a future and family from scratch, they would have made it much more interesting and entertaining. They pulled too much of the weirdness from the book.
(2) They couldn’t advertise it properly. A friend of mine said, “After watching the previews, he still didn’t know what the movie is about.” The problem is that if you give away any of the actual story and emotions of the film, you are giving away the point of watching the film. That’s why they were limited in advertising it. They couldn’t really speak to the point of the film.