I must admit to entering Meet the Robinsons with zero expectations. The film’s trailer seemed to offer up an anodyne family film that applied feelgood sentiment with a trowel. A number of the early scenes play towards either by-the-numbers mawkishness or a slapstick element – especially when the literally moustache-twirling villain in black enters the scene. However, neither the trailer nor the advance word prepared one for the film that we do end up receiving. At about the point that we arrive in the future, Meet the Robinsons turns into something completely demented. In trying to describe Meet the Robinsons, you could consider it as a variant on tv’s The Jetsons (1962), perhaps having been recast with a slightly older version of the juvenile inventor hero of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius (2001). At least, that is the description you expect going in. However, with the introduction of the Robinsons, the film becomes what can only be described as a children’s movie version of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). In the last third, the film opens up to become almost a Back to the Future (1985) in reverse – [PLOT SPOILERS] where Back to the Future had teenager Michael J. Fox travelling back in time and having to get his parents together so that he can be born, Meet the Robinsons has young Louis travelling into the future where his own children have to get him to sort things out so that they can be born.

Indeed, there are times that Meet the Robinsons could be described as a science-fictional version of Alice in Wonderland (1865). The scenes with the Robinson family come with a tone of madcap surrealism – the mother directs a nightclub orchestra comprised of singing frogs; the sister and brother have races through the house, she in a life-sized toy train while he is fired out of a cannon; the grandfather has had his head surgically turned around backwards and leads Louis on a chase around a sculpted garden where hedges turn out to be trampolines or trapdoors; another family member talks only via a wooden hand puppet; another uncle is a superhero who works as a pizza delivery person; two heads that are said to be uncles pop up out of planters on the doorstep to argue about which doorbell to push, whereupon the door is answered by an octopoid butler. There are nutty set-pieces like the dinnertable food fight with the brother firing meatballs and sausages down the length of the table at the sister from out of a cannon. And then there is the confrontation with the dinosaur where the family’s peculiarities all appealingly come together to help tackle the menace. It is in these scenes that the Disney animators give the impression that they have been inhaling the same substances for inspiration that they used to back in the days of Fantasia (1940) and Dumbo (1941).

The bowler hat (and the child it seemingly produces halfway through, along with an amazing array of gadgets) ends up being the scene-stealer of the show. Indeed, the bowler hat would make a wonderful nemesis for Inspector Gadget some day. Seemingly as though they cannot get the image of the tripedial alien invaders that took over Chicken Little out of their minds, the Disney animators turn the climax of the film into yet another variant on The War of the Worlds (1895) with the bowler hat and its spawn having conquered the world.

The latter scenes settle down and become more traditional minded. Even here the script is woven with a surprising degree of intelligence. The time travel element is not merely a cute mode of getting to the adventure venue but is instead wound around itself to create surprise origins about both the villain and the Robinson family. It is pleasantly unexpected to see time travel elements handled with such a degree of sophistication in what might otherwise be just a throwaway film designed for moppet audiences.