Kat’s Film and Book Reviews

Okay, remember last week’s quotation?  It was won by Abby, who correctly guessed Back to the Future. Good job, Abby!

Here’s the original Back to the Future trailer, though it doesn’t have last week’s quotation in it.

Now, for the new quotation!  Ready?

Fasten your seatbelts.  It’s going to be a bumpy night.

Meet the Robinsons

2007

Rated G

Directed by Stephen Anderson

I was first introduced to this film through the Rob Thomas song, “Little Wonders,” which was on the soundtrack.  The song is a poignant tribute to the small things that make up a good life, the “little wonders” that take place in the “small hours.”  The things that make up a family and the memories that form it. 

This movie is about family, but it’s also about taking responsibility for your life.  The two themes are connected; it’s only when you are true to your gifts and take responsibility for your failures that you even become capable of cherishing those little wonders and small hours. 

The film begins with a flashback 12 years, to when a furtive, cloaked woman leaves a baby on the doorstep of an orphanage.  Twelve years later, that baby, named Lewis, is on his 124^th adoption interview, but none of his prospective parents have understood his passion for science and inventing.  He complains about his apparent unwantedness—even his mother didn’t want him—to the orphanage director, who gently reminds him that perhaps his mother couldn’t take care of him, not that she didn’t want him.

Fueled by that thought, he attempts to invent a brain-scanner, so that he can scan his own infant memories and get the information he needs to find his mother.  This desire motivates him throughout the film, as he learns about the bonds of love that make a family.

He gets a visitor from a young man from the future, who claims to be a time cop, but is in fact his future son, Wilbur.  The rest of the film has Lewis and Wilbur trying to repair a mistake that Wilbur made, while avoiding a cartoonish enemy, the man in the bowler hat.  They zip back and forth in time machines, present to future to past to present, encountering the memorable Robinson family and a few other interesting people.

The film is an interesting and brightly colored combination of You Can’t Take It With You and Back to the Future.  Some reviewers have claimed that the back-and-forth of the time travel is hard to follow, but most kids don’t find it so.  The villain isn’t scary so much as a nuisance, but provides comedic relief in several places. 

Lewis is able to let go of his desire to illuminate the past, to find his mother; a struggle that mirrors director Stephen Anderson’s experience as an adoptee who has not felt a desire to search for his birthparents.  It’s possible that some adoptees will not relate to how easily Lewis is able to turn his back on his past in order to “keep moving forward,” as the film’s motto suggests, but as an adoptive parent, I was gratified by Lewis’ realization that in the love of his new family, he has everything he needs.

The pay-off of the film, of course, is watching young Lewis find his place in a family as unique as he is.  No matter how many times we see it, there’s something deeply satisfying about watching the misfit find where he belongs.  Since we all feel that way sometimes, it gives us hope that we will find and claim our own rightful place.