April 02, 2007

Meet The Robinsons

We went to see Meet the Robinsons this weekend. The newer theater in town was showing it in "Disney Digital 3D," so we figured it would be fun. I was pleasantly surprised. The movie was sweet and touching in the way that many kids movies are, but also amusing. The plot was fairly transparent, and nothing really happened that you couldn't see coming a mile away, but that really shouldn't be too surprising. The animation was wonderful, and a few times, I caught myself looking less at the movie than at the details of the animated world: the individual blades of grass, the weathered buildings, the movement of a character's hair. The 3D effects were not the type that were there for the purpose of flying out of the screen and into the audience (for those, we got to see the stereoscopic 3D version of the 1953 Donald Duck and Chip and Dale cartoon, "Working for Peanuts"), but rather simply served to give depth to everything on the screen.

Unfortunately, when anyone releases an animated movie, especially a computer animated movie, the question that many people (including me) will ask is: How does it compare to (insert name of a Pixar movie or use "Pixar's movies")? Invariably, every movie else suffers from that comparison. In reality, it was not on the same level as Pixar's films, but even so, it was worth seeing, even more so in 3D.

Of course, the real joy of going to a 3D movie is getting to laugh at everyone else wearing those ridiculous looking glasses...until you remember that you are wearing them too. Now, I could post pictures of how silly we looked wearing the glasses, but I think I'll leave that to Melissa.

2 comments:

crse said...

cool i was hoping it was good because my other viewing choice is TMNT. And i am out of movie veto after nixing bridge to teribithia and charlottes web. I dont have a lot of standards for kids movies. I just want it to be bearable.

Matt said...

(on a barely related note...) Back in October I took a friend to see The Nightmare Before Christmas which had been re-released in 3D. He has that thing where one of his eyes is always looking in another direction (whateverit'scalled) and said the movie just looked normal to him. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but it now seems obvious that people who don't see straight with both eyes can't enjoy 3D movies. And I find that I've made another completely useless point, but it popped into my mind as I was reading your post.