Meet the Robinsons

Lewis is an aspiring 12-year-old inventor living in an orphanage residential house. His energy, eccentricity, and malfunctioning inventions scare off potential parents, so he works on a machine to scan his memory to locate his birth mother, who abandoned him at the orphanage when he was a baby. While taking the scanner to his school's science fair, Lewis meets 13-year-old Wilbur Robinson, a mysterious boy claiming he is from the future and needs to recover a time machine, which was stolen by a bowler hat-wearing man. Lewis tries to demonstrate the scanner, but it has been sabotaged by the Bowler Hat Guy and falls apart, throwing the science fair into chaos. Lewis leaves while the Bowler Hat Guy, with help from his robotic bowler hat named Doris, steals the scanner, planning to pass it off as his own to an invention corporation; their plan fails when he cannot properly demonstrate it.

Wilbur meets up with Lewis and asks him to repair the scanner. Lewis demands proof that Wilbur really is from the future, which he does by taking him in a second time machine to the year 2037, which is highly advanced technologically. Lewis realizes he can use the time machine to meet his mother, but a resulting argument causes them to crash. Lewis agrees to fix the time machine on the condition that Wilbur has to take him to visit his mother afterwards. At Wilbur's house, Lewis meets the rest of the eccentric Robinson family except for Wilbur's father Cornelius and the inventor of the time's technologies, who is away on a business trip. Having followed Lewis, the Bowler Hat Guy and Doris try to kidnap him, but the Robinsons beat them back. The Robinsons offer to adopt Lewis, but change their mind after learning he is from the past. Wilbur admits to lying to Lewis about taking him back to his mother, causing Lewis to run off.

The Bowler Hat Guy approaches Lewis and offers to take him to his mother if he fixes the memory scanner. Once he does, the Bowler Hat Guy betrays and ties him up, revealing that Cornelius is Lewis's future self and that he is an adult version of Lewis's roommate, Michael "Goob" Yagoobian. Because he was kept awake by Lewis's work on the scanner, Goob fell asleep during a Little League baseball game and failed to make an important catch, costing his team the championship. Over time, Goob became so withdrawn and bitter that he was never adopted. Doris is "DOR-15", one of Lewis's failed and abandoned inventions. They both blamed Lewis for their misfortunes and decided to ruin his life. After leaving Lewis in the future, they return to the past and successfully pitch the memory scanner.

It is revealed that Doris manipulated Goob, convincing him to mass-produce her in the past to enslave humanity, turning the future into a dystopia. After escaping the enslaved Robinsons and Doris models, Lewis repairs the time machine, confronts Doris in the past, and destroys her by promising to never invent her, restoring the future. At Lewis's request, Wilbur asks the adult Goob to join his family, but he flees in shame of his actions.

Lewis finally meets Cornelius, who explains that the memory scanner started their successful career and persuades Lewis to return to the science fair. Although Wilbur fulfills his promise and takes Lewis back to see the moment when his mother abandoned him, Lewis chooses not to interfere, having realized he already has a family.

Wilbur drops Lewis off in his own time and says goodbye. Lewis heads to the fair, en route waking up Goob just in time for him to make the winning catch, averting him becoming the Bowler Hat Guy; he is later adopted by new parents. Back at the fair, Lewis asks for one more chance to demonstrate his scanner, which this time succeeds. Lewis is adopted by Lucille, one of the science fair judges, and her husband Bud, who nicknames him "Cornelius". With a clear view of his success, Lewis begins working towards his future.

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious... and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

— The statement that ends the film, clarifying the message of not dwelling on failures and to "keep moving forward," attributed to Walt Disney.

In addition, Joe Robinson is Wilbur's obese uncle, Billie's wife, and Bud and Fritz' brother who rides in an easy chair and his whimpers are provided by an uncredited actor. Also in the Robinson family is their dog Buster who wears glasses.

^†Note: The character of Lewis was voiced by both Daniel Hansen and Jordan Fry. Daniel Hansen voiced Lewis at the beginning of the film's production, and when the studio needed Lewis' lines changed, they had Jordan Fry re-dub many segments.[7][8][9]

Director Stephen Anderson at the film's premiere

Originally titled A Day with Wilbur Robinson, production began in June 2004, and was scheduled for a 2006 release.[10][11] During the film's production, Walt Disney Animation Studios' storyboard artist Stephen Anderson decided to direct the film due to his personal connection to Lewis, since they both grew up adopted.[12][13]

The studio planned to adapt Joyce's style to the film, but due to his involvement stylistically in Blue Sky Studios' Robots, the style was slightly reworked. While still taking cues from his retro style, influenced by everything from Technicolor movies to '40s architectural design, the crew also took inspiration from the company Apple.[12] Unlike their previous film Chicken Little, a film starring CG animals, the animation crew had the challenge to animate CG humans. They took inspiration from Pixar's The Incredibles when animating the characters. They also took inspiration from Disney animated classics, such as Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, and Peter Pan, and from Warner Brothers cartoons to capture the 1950s aesthetic.[12]

While the film was in production, The Walt Disney Company announced on January 24, 2006, that it would be acquiring Pixar, and as a result, John Lasseter became the chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. When he saw an early screening for the movie, he told Anderson that he did not find the villain scary or threatening enough, and suggested that he make some changes. Ten months later, almost 60% of the film had been scrapped and redone. The villain had improved and was given a new sidekick, a dinosaur chase had been added, and the ending was changed.[14]

Over 600 REAL D Cinema digital 3D-equipped theaters presented Disney Digital 3-D version of the film.[15] In all theatrical showings, the standard version of the film was preceded by the 1938 Mickey Mouse short film Boat Builders and the 3D version was preceded by the 1953 Chip 'n Dale 3D short Working for Peanuts.[16] The final credits of the 3D version were left two-dimensional, except for the names of those who converted the film to 3D.

The soundtrack album was released by Walt Disney Records on March 27, 2007. It includes four original songs written for the film, performed by Rufus Wainwright, Jamie Cullum, and Rob Thomas. Contributors to the album beyond the Danny Elfman score include another track by Wainwright ("The Motion Waltz (Emotional Commotion)"), The All-American Rejects ("The Future Has Arrived"), They Might Be Giants ("There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow"), and the Jonas Brothers ("Kids of the Future", a parody of "Kids in America"). The track "Little Wonders", recorded by Thomas, reached number 5 on the Billboard AC chart and the top 20 in Australia and Canada.

The song "This Much Fun" by Cowboy Mouth, which was featured in the trailer, was not featured in the film or on the soundtrack. The song "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" was originally from the Disneyland attraction General Electric's Carousel of Progress which was located in Tomorrowland.

A Meet the Robinsons video game was published by Buena Vista Games for PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, Wii, GameCube, Nintendo DS, and Microsoft Windows. England-based Climax Group developed their own adaption for the Game Boy Advance.

Disneytoon Studios originally planned to make a direct-to-video sequel to the film, tentatively titled Meet the Robinsons 2: First Date.[29] However, when Lasseter became Walt Disney Animation Studios' new chief creative officer, he cancelled all sequels in development at Disneytoon, including Meet the Robinsons 2, and ordered the studio to shift its focus towards spin-off films and original productions.[29]

A limited edition Magicband was also released by the company to commemorate the 15th anniversary.[30] On May 7th 2022, the cast and crew who worked on the film including Stephen Anderson the film's director/voice of Bowler Hat Guy, Jordan Fry, the voice of Lewis, Matthew Josten, the younger voice of Goob and Jessie Flower, the younger voice of Franny, reunited to celebrate the film's 15th anniversary by partaking in a 2 hour livestream on The Tammy Tuckey Show on YouTube.[31] The event had been organized ahead of time. In 2023, the characters of Lewis, Wilbur, Bowler Hat Guy, Carl, and Lucille (in her young scientist judge form) appeared in Disney's centennial anniversary short film Once Upon a Studio, in which they were recreated using new CGI models. This was due to the original models not being animated for over a decade, as well as updates made to animation technology since the original film's release, with rigging and rendering being reworked so they could be used with modern technology.[32]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Meet the Robinsons.

• Official website
• Meet the Robinsons at IMDb
• Meet the Robinsons at the TCM Movie Database
• Meet the Robinsons at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Meet the Robinsons at Box Office Mojo
• Meet the Robinsons at Rotten Tomatoes
• Meet the Robinsons at Metacritic