The twit family Robinson

Noel Vera

And now, the latest piece of ordure from The Rat Factory--sorry,
Walt Disney Pictures…

Stephen J. Anderson's "Meet the Robinsons, 2006), based on the book
by William Joyce, feels like ninety minutes spent in a disco for the
half-blind and hard-of-hearing. I've read of Japanese interrogation
techniques that were less sadistic; should be classified as "Cruel
and Unusual Punishment," or "In Violation of the Geneva Code."

It's an excruciating movie. Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen and
Jordan Fry), an orphan inventor out to prove himself at the school
science fair, is the kind of standard-issue Disney hero they seem to
crank out by the metric ton lots nowadays. Throw in a "Back to the
Future" plotline where Bowler Hat Guy (voiced by Anderson himself)
steals a time machine to go back into his past and sabotage Lewis'
science project; a family of drearily "lovable" eccentrics called
the Robinsons (at least the filmmakers must have hoped we'd think
they're eccentric (we might if we've never seen a single Warner
Brothers animated short); a chorus line of song-and-dance frogs (how
dare they insult the memory of Chuck Jones' immortal "One Froggy
Evening?") and you have the formula for the kind of "fun, fun, fun
for everyone!" Disney's been selling for the past, oh, forever. At
one point a character explains her invention "I have the caffeine
patch…each patch is the equivalent of 12 cups of coffee, you can
stay up for days with no side effects," whereupon she lets loose a
shriek. You know exactly how her listener feels.

It's not as if the story made sense--if Bowler Hat Guy upsets the
past, shouldn't the effect on the future be instantaneous? Granted,
some time-travel movies ("Back to the Future," "A Sound of Thunder")
posit a delay (actually time-travel movies as a whole are full of
plotholes and paradoxes), shouldn't someone establish the length of
the delay, or at least raise the issue? If Bowler Hat Guy is such a
hopeless klutz, shouldn't the flying bowler (don't ask) look for a
smarter partner in crime? If the Robinsons are so rich, shouldn't
they have a security system commensurate with their wealth (what
with people and even dinosaurs popping in and out of their estate,
seemingly at will)? If Lewis visits the future in a flying car,
shouldn't he be sitting quietly in the passenger seat instead of
trying to wrestle the controls from Wilbur Robinson (Wesley
Singerman)? If Bowler Hat Guy steals Lewis' invention and tries to
pass it off as his own, shouldn't he be trying to do that in in
Lewis' time instead of in his own--where, presumably, such devices
would already be old hat (and if stealing the devices instantly
alters that timeline--well, see above)? And if the family finds out
that Lewis is from the past (and he is who he is), shouldn't they
immediately grab him, tie him down till the time machine is fixed,
make sure he goes back to where he belongs--maybe erase his memory
in the process? Isn't doing that a far, far more urgent priority
than, well, showing disapproval towards one family member's apparent
foolishness?

But it's useless trying to apply logic to the product of a studio
that's never been famous for storytelling logic--when gags fail or
the pace slows it's time to turn on the waterworks, and "Robinsons"
is simply full of it. Lewis is such a needy whiner it's no wonder he
responds to the Robinsons' in-your-face cheerfulness; Bowler Hat Guy
is a Snidely Whiplash cliché too annoying to laugh at; the ending is
such a shameless affirmation of the Robinsons' essential Goodness
and Cheer you feel as trapped as James Stewart, surrounded by
rugrats and loving neighbors at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life"
(Yes, I'm aware that most people consider Capra's film to end
happily, but I don't see it--for me Stewart suffers the equivalent
of Hell On Earth, is in effect a drooling zombie that smiles on cue
at each and every bell ring).

Setting aside the story (which is lame) and the characters (who are
repulsive), the very look of the movie isn't all that impressive.
Obviously the picture was influenced by the Tomorrowland section of
Disney's park (the cheesiest land in a kingdom of cheddar, in my
opinion--even Space Mountain lacked a decent loop or corkscrew);
they were also trying for a '30s Futurism look, or something like
Frank Paul's covers for Amazing Stories in the '20s, with the kind
of stylized, spotless feel--not a grease stain or fingerprint
anywhere--that just begs to be lampooned. But asking for satire
(real satire, with teeth) from a Disney flick is like asking Uncle
Walt himself for a pay raise (look up his record with unions, if you
like); you'll find yourself staring into a gaping, howling abyss
where the heart (or brain) should be.

Oh, not all of it is reprehensible. For about five minutes, when
Bowler Hat Guy's vision for the future is realized the movie's color
palette darkens from banal pastels into something really
interesting, full of shadows and textures lit by a warm orange glow
(presumably hellfire, or at least the Disney version of it); workers
move with synchronized precision, recalling Lang's "Metropolis" but
with Magritte bowlers in hand--a nice absurdist touch in this all-
too-brief dystopia (the "Spongebob Squarepants" movie featured
something similar, only with bucket helmets that managed to be
funnier and creepier, both). Then balance is restored, the dreary
pastels returned, the smiles relentless as ever.

At picture's end we learn that the Robinson's motto--"Keep moving
forward" is actually Uncle Walt's own. Move forward indeed--to quote
an even greater thinker than Disney (whose true genius was in
squeezing middle-class families even today of most of their child-
raising dollars): "he who forgets the past is condemned to repeat
it." Disney was a master of kitsch, of supposedly wholesome (read:
sterile) family entertainment, of a moneymaking synergy the richest
men in the world gaze upon with envy (from movie to merchandise to
themed vacation resorts, he had it all)--if he wanted you to keep
moving forward and not spare a backward glance, that's probably
because he didn't want you finding out about the lesser known, far
more talented artists (U.B. Iwerks, Tex Avery, the Fleischer
brothers, to name but a few) out there in the great unknown, waiting
to be discovered.

(First published in Businessworld, 6/8/07)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)