Meet the Robinsons

In 2007, the first film to be released under the direction of new CEO John Lasseter hit theaters. Starring Jordan Fry, Wesley Singerman, Harland Williams, Tom Kenny, Steve Anderson, Angela Bassett, Laurie Metcalf, Adam West, Tom Selleck, and Nicole Sullivan, Meet the Robinsons grossed $169.3 million worldwide. It also got its own video game.

Twelve year old orphan inventor Lewis (Fry) is attempting to find a family. However, he has a breakthrough that allows him to invent a machine that can illustrate forgotten memories. However, a tall man in a bowler hat (Anderson) breaks and steals the machine, which leads Lewis to travel into the future to meet the Robinsons (Singerman, Anderson, Sullivean, Williams, Bassett, Metcalf, West, Selleck, Ethan Sandler, Paul Butcher and Don Hall).

With this film, the darkness of the Eisner era ended and the Lasseter era begun. And what a film to start off with.

Meet the Robinsons  is basically what Chicken Little should have been, with humor that has good follow up, fun characters and story with quite a bit of heart.

The film, while not a straight up comedy, has lots of humorous moments, with some of the funniest involving Little DOR-15. Possessing the Frank Sinatra frog and the T-Rex is great in and of itself, but the joke that comes from it where what Bowler Hat Guy (BHG) doesn’t’ think his plans through is perfect. And nearly all of BHG’s mannerisms have their ways of getting at least a chuckle.

The humor is also what makes the characters, and their quirks, so much fun. An interstellar pizza guy? Life size toy trains? Wooden puppet wife? Teaching frogs to sing? Every Robinson has a quirk and while there are time where it’s overdone, those times are few and far between. Fact is, this is one of Disney’s best character driven films.

And the characters and their interactions with each other is what gives the story so much heart. The family congratulating each other in their failures and helping Lewis to realize that failure isn’t the end, but just a way to not do something was a theme long missing in Disney lore until now. In fact, this film’s story in and of itself could possibly be an apology from the studio about everything it released post-renaissance up til this point in time.

#8

Toy Story

In 1979, George Lucas founded The Graphics Group, which made up one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. They began working on film sequences in 1982 and were sold to Steve Jobs for $5 million and became a computer hardware company. Their core product was the Pixar Image Computer, which was sold to government agencies and the medical community. But, employee John Lasseter started creating short demonstration animations, which led the company to produce commercials for other companies. In 1990, it sold the hardware division and grew its relationship with the Disney Animation Studio, resulting in a $26 million deal the next year to produce three feature films. The first of which was Toy Story. With a screenplay written by Joss Whedon, Andrew Stanton, Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow, it starred Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, John Ratzenberger, Jim Varney and Wallace Shawn. It made over $300 million and is considered one of the best animated films ever made, winning, among others, the Los Angeles Critics Association Awards for Best Animation, an ASCAP Film and Television Music Award, eight Annie Awards and the Best Animated film for the Kansas City Film Critics Circle.

Woody (Hanks) is the unofficial leader of a group of toys belonging to a boy named Andy (John Morris). Woody, an old cowboy doll with a string, receives competition when Andy gets a new toy for his birthday. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (Allen), who thinks he’s really a spaceman, has leadership qualities that make Woody jealous. When Buzz is accidentally lost, the other toys think Woody masterminded the disappearance. Eventually, the duo have a confrontation that forces them to join together.

This isn’t your average buddy comedy adventure. Sure we’ve got the usual tropes associated with these types of films. Woody and Buzz learn to get along and whatnot. We’ve seen the characterization done in many other films before. This one stands out among all the rest not only because the characters are sentient toys, but that one stopped being the favorite in favor of the other, who doesn’t realize his delusions until three quarters of the way through the film. The best part is, both characters are extremely relatable. No one likes getting shoved aside in favor of someone else and at the same time, we’ve all been the new guy. (I’m still the new guy in my office right now.) And facing a revelation that what you’ve thought to be completely true all your life isn’t true at all completely wrecks people. I’m convinced there was more than fake tea in that teacup.

This film also has no true villain. People can mark Sid as evil, but he’s just a young boy who’s taking his destructive fantasies out on toys. And he doesn’t realize they’re sentient until the end. He doesn’t know that he’s in the wrong.

Say what you will about him, but I actually enjoy most Randy Newman songs (most). And to me, “I Will Go Sailing No More” is the best song on the soundtrack. It really captures what Buzz is feeling about having realized his entire existence has been a lie.

Even after 19 years, the animation still looks great for the most part. The humans and dog still look like they belong in the uncanny valley though. But for being the first feature-length computer-animated film, a few things were going to be off. It only got better from there. #5.