A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Meet the Robinsons (3D)

Date Viewed: 4/7/07

Details:

Voice talent: Angela Bassett

Daniel Hansen

Stephen J. Anderson

Adam West

Tom Selleck

Director: Stephen J. Anderson

Score: Danny Elfman

Score: -1/2

The Review: What's the difference between wit and humor? One answer is the difference between Pixar and Disney. Wit involves inventiveness, ingenuity, a bit of style and cleverness; humor is mere fun, enjoyment, pratfalls and revels of incongruity.

While not quite witless, Meet the Robinsons is significantly under-resourced in the wit department. A snidely Whiplash type villain with the IQ of a frog; a frog with the IQ of a mobster; a dinosaur with the logic of -- logic?! Hell, one of the more interesting characters was the dinosaur, with whom it was easy to sympathize. On the other hand, the extreme caricature of bumbling evil ("the bowler hat guy") was so far off the charts as to be an embarrassment, and the rest were disappointingly 1D: a family unit sufficiently goofy, bizarre and silly to attract the attention of a 5-year old (i.e., the putative audience) -- but not funny enough to make him laugh. Would that the characterization had been as fulfilling as the 3D visualization was intended to be.

What's happening, and why should you care? There's a young orphan, who happens to be a focused, brilliant inventor (and simultaneously spectacular in his failures); his roommate, who seems to sleepwalk through life (but then, the inventor keeps him up late at night); and an urgent emergency situation that grabs the orphan and propels him into the future. Robinsons carries a time-travel theme with some of the darker feel & consequences of the second Back to the Future movie. But there's very little awe or wonder -- for me, a requisite hallmark both of good animation and any compelling vision of the future.

Animation quality, even in 3D mode, was unimpressive: short foreground focus, uninspiring and even uninteresting city background landscapes (a bit fuzzy and certainly not well-detailed), only occasional leverage of the 3D effect (although I could argue that subtle 3D usage is better than in-your-face extreme depth used simply for shock or startle). For all that it was a mere minute or two, the preceding trailer for Ratatouille, a pending Pixar feature-length effort, was better in many respects than the entire feature-length Robinsons: animation quality, depth and interest in the background, wit and characterization.

Much of the voice talent is unfamiliar, and those whose names might be recognized are playing close-to-bit parts (Angela Basset, Adam West, Tom Selleck). The score was by Danny Elfman, usually a good sign, but this was not as good as many of his predecessor efforts have been.

Not recommended.

For how long will 3D be just a gimmick? When will it become instrumental to the plot or an integral part of the entertainment? Is there a reason why the red-green effort of the 50's died rapidly, and why its recent reincarnation with polarized projection is still reserved for children's fare? Where's the imagination? Does this imply there's no reason for ever using 3D? What will be the breakthrough that can take it beyond a mere special effect? How might it be effectively used, and how much of that can be rendered in cinema? Are there any previous 3D efforts that offer hints or directions? Are there previous science fiction themed efforts where 3D was almost employed, or where it might have become important?

Are there any 3D professions beyond that of entertainment? I class sports as entertainment, for the understanding and manipulation of trajectories in 3D is essential for most ball sports, even if it has become a learned body-skill. I wonder how many airline pilots truly exercise a 3D sense of space; perhaps air traffic controllers are more aligned, more sensitive, more proprioceptive. Most of us are Earth-bound, inhabitants of a flatland not that different from the one described by Abbott lo those many decades (centuries?) ago.

How do people use 3D today? I'd warrant that most people do not -- other than mere routine depth perception in service of navigating around their everyday world. And perceptual neuroscience tells us that much of this can be accomplished by one eye and careful experience with motion perspective (after all, that's essentially what happens in 2D movies). Evolution has given us a visual system that is 3D-capable, but it's not obvious we've come up with any way in which it is essential -- at least today, outside the African forest. Personally and professionally, I use 3D systems routinely for protein structure visualization, a virtual reality where the complexity of molecular structure can be rendered understandable and made directly-manipulable. There are a few other professions where such 3D rendering is useful, possibly even critical -- including any design arena such as architect or engineer -- but these are few and far between, and seldom generate the protagonist of any movie worth watching, and even if so, seldom would the work itself be the focus of the plot. But perhaps this is just the lack of my imagination speaking. The closest thing that comes to mind is the opening scene of Minority Report, where Tom Cruise is using an advanced visualization system in pursuit of crime -- not quite 3D, but a complex system integral to his functioning as a professional, albeit not a critical plot focus.

(8-Apr-07)

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