MEET THE ROBINSONS
SUMMARY:
Lewis is a young inventor and orphan. While longing for a family of his own, Lewis has grown saddened over the years as all his attempts to be adopted seem to have failed. As well, each and every invention he attempts to fashion meets with disaster.
One day, Lewis' thinking turns to his Mother, and why she chose to leave him on the orphanage's doorstep all those years ago. This leads Lewis to think that maybe deep within his mind, a memory of her still exists, and maybe with it, he can find his Mom and reunite with her.
Lewis then tinkers non-stop on a machine to unearth the memory deep in his mind. Unrealized to Lewis, the constant tinkering sleep-deprives his roommate, Mike Yagoobian (also known as 'Goob'). however, Lewis is too busy with his own work to realize the effect on the other boy.
While Goob goes to play on the school baseball team, Lewis takes his invention to the science fair. During the science fair, he runs into a strange boy named Wilbur Robinson, who cautions him to stay away from 'The Bowler-Hat Guy.' Lewis ignores this, and attempts to make his invention work. Unknown to him, the 'Bowler-Hat Guy' and his hat (a mechanical creation) sabotage the item, causing it to malfunction, sending Lewis sadly running back to the orphanage.
Once there, he encounters Wilbur again, who tosses Lewis into a strange machine, that then appears to take them into the future. Wilbur is amazed, and attempts to use the time machine to go back in time and find his Mother. However, the two boys end up crashing the time machine, which Wilbur took from his Father's lab without permission.
While trying to figure out what to do, Wilbur takes Lewis to the Robinson mansion, where the boy is introduced to the strange yet caring family, albeit always wearing some strange form of headgear (a fruitbasket, a hat, etc)
Meanwhile, 'Bowler Hat Guy,' and his mechanical hat, take Lewis' invention, and attempt to sell it to a local company. However, 'Bowler Hat Guy' has no idea how it works, and the hat (whom he calls Doris), decides they need to find Lewis to figure it out.
Going back to the orphanage, 'Bowler Hat Guy' encounters Goob, who due to sleep deprivation, lost the game, and suffered the wrath of his teammates. Goob explains that the orphanage's supervisor said he should move on, but 'Bowler Hat Guy' states that Goob should use that experience, and never forget it...much to Goob's confusion.
After searching more of the Orphanage, Doris calculates that Lewis must have went to the future with Wilbur Robinson, and the two head into the future with a time machine of their own.
Back in the future, Lewis is introduced to more of the Robinsons' house, and how Lewis' father, Cornelius, is a great inventor, having successfully perfected time travel. However, Cornelius' most recent time iteration was stolen by the 'Bowler Hat Guy,' and this explains why Wilbur is trying desperately to set things right.
At the same time, Doris infiltrates the house, and attempts to kill Wilbur, but not before finding that 'Bowler Hat Guy' has time-travelled back and forth through time, returning to the future with a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The Robinson family and Lewis manage to take down the enormous beast, and the family is ecstatic. It is then that Wilbur lets slip that Lewis is an orphan, and the family unanimously approves...until Wilbur knocks the hat off, prompting Wilbur's mother, Franny, to declare that Lewis has to go back to his own time.
Hurt and upset that he has once again seemingly lost the chance to have a family of his own, Lewis walks away, but is then accosted by 'Bowler Hat Guy' and Doris, who promise that if he helps fix his machine, they'll take him back in time to find his Mom.
Taking Lewis to the orphanage (now an abandoned building), Lewis fixes the memory-scanning machine, but 'Bowler Hat Guy' has Doris tie Lewis up, going back on his promise.
It is then that 'Bowler Hat Guy' reveals that he is actually Mike Yagoobian. Goob explains how Lewis' tinkering kept him from sleeping properly, and resulted in him losing the baseball game at school. Goob channeled this into deep resentment towards Lewis, that ate away at him, and caused his bad mood to keep him from ever getting adopted. in that time, Lewis was adopted, and many years later, became known as Cornelius Robinson, the head of Robinson Industries.
Goob angrily tried to get revenge on Lewis, but his feeble attempts proved futile. It wasn't until meeting Doris, the robotic bowler hat (a rejected experiment of Lewis') came up with a plan of her own.
Lewis tries to get Goob to see that he (Goob) also shares some of the blame, since Goob was not able to move on from that baseball game loss, but Goob refuses to acknowledge this.
ANALYSIS:
In the cartoon film "Meet the Robinsons", we can find these what we so call supernatural events. Marvelous and Uncanny events happened with Marvelous mostly happening to the main character in the movie, Lewis, and the Uncanny to the antagonist Goob.
In literature, Marvelous events is the case where the reader is aware that there are no rational explanation to what is happening in the work. We have two kinds of Marvelous-- the pure and the fantastic. So, in the movie, we can mostly see the pure kind of marvelous. Let's take for example the scene where Lewis invented a machine to uncertain the memory deep in his mind. At a young age, Lewis, can't certainly do that. Aside from that, there is nothing, known in history, invented that can read ones mind and review his/her memories. This thing is just impossible. Yes, maybe we have seen machines reading memories but in sci-fi movies only. Another scenario is the case of Doris, the mechanical hat of Bowler-Hat Guy, which later revealed himself to be Goob. No robot or machine can think rationally right? In the case of Doris, she is the one influencing, brainwashing Goob to do evil things and take revenge on Lewis.
The machine that Wilbur Robinson used to time travel is also an example of a pure marvelous event. Time travel isn't even proven to be true in reality. In reality, we can neither go back to the past nor go i advance to the future. Cornelius "Lewis" Robinson perfecting time travel is also another example. The events that i have mentioned are just some of the pure marvelous events that have happened in the film.
ow let's go to the Uncanny--Bizarre and weird occurrences but a natural explanation such as dream, intoxication, or madness can be given. The uncanny also has two categories-- the pure and the fantastic. Pure uncanny refers to strange, horrific/incredible events because of the deceiving mind of the the author but not supernatural. As in the case of Lewis as an inventor at a young age--- 12. Isn't it incredible?
Fantastic Uncanny are events that are given natural explanation. this applies to the antagonist in the film-- Mike Yagoobian (Goob). He is having his revenge on Lewis because he is blaming him to be the reason why he lost in his little league games causing his life to be miserable. As stated in the summary "Goob obsessed over his defeat, scaring away his chances at adoption, and stayed at the orphanage after it closed down eventually coming to blame Lewis for his misery".
The cartoon film is more on the pure marvelous category. Though it seems to be just a mere work of the mind-- full of fantasy and supernatural events: though it's a pure fiction, we can't deny the fact that the film had taught us one great thing. As what Walt Disney has said at the end of the film:
"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".
KEEP MOVING!! :) :) :)
Reference:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396555/synopsis
Thanks for this!
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