Finally caught Meet The Robinsons this weekend (in 3-D, no less) and it was...eh, okay.
Disney bought the rights to William Joyce's slight but gorgeous picture book A Day With Wilbur Robinson eons ago, so this movie has been in the works for a long time. Apparently it was in something resembling final form when Pixar godhead John Lasseter was named head of Disney Feature Animation, and ordered major work done.
What Meet The Robinsons was like in its original incarnation we will never know, but as released, it shows some of Lasseter's fingerprints, but the movie it most closely resembles is Brad Bird's The Incredibles--the character design is very similar, and the movement and acting of the animated characters shows Bird's influence.
Trouble is, Bird is a genius, and his style is organic. Stephen Anderson is the director of record, but Meet The Robinsons feels like it has been cobbled together by committee. Feature-length animated films have seldom been the province of one single-minded creator (Who was the auteur of Dumbo?), but the best come together semlessly. Here, lovely grace notes and hilarious throwaway gags compete with heavy-handed sentiment and a lot of dead air. It's watchable, enjoyable even...but it doesn't have much of a purpose.
In some ways, Meet The Robinsons reminded me of The Great Mouse Detective, the mid-eighties transitional picture that paved the way for the (all-too-brief) renaissance in Disney animation that began with The Little Mermaid. It's slight but enjoyable, and better by far than recent Disney efforts like Treasure Planet, Home On The Range and the unspeakably awful Chicken Little. Whether it points the way to a brighter future for Disney's once-mighty animation unit, only time will tell.
