Walt Disney's 46th animated feature, released in March 2007 in standard and Disney Digital 3-D and based loosely on William Joyce's picture book A Day with Wilbur Robinson (though Joyce did have some creative input on the adaptation).
Follows the story of 12-year old orphan/child prodigy Lewis in his attempt to find a family, a journey that takes him 30 years into the future with the fast-talking Wilbur Robinson and in pursuit of the do-wrong, overgrown man-child Bowler Hat Guy and his evil, robotic bowler hat, hell bent on taking credit for Lewis's inventions.
Generally a
bad example of how to write a
time travel story (the film itself has
seven credited writers) and yeah,
it just bugs us. Still probably one of the better non-Pixar Disney films in recent years, generally being seen as a step in the right direction alongside
Bolt.
This film provides examples of:
- Action Mom (Franny)
- Actor Allusion (When Lewis asks Wilbur what his currently-absent father looks like, Wilbur lies and says "Tom Selleck". When Wilbur's father shows up at the end of the film, he looks nothing like Selleck, but he sure sounds like him... This is actually a kind of reverse Actor Allusion: the scene was written first, and gave the director the idea to offer Selleck the role.)
- Played straight with international releases, where Tom Selleck is replaced by whoever's playing Cornelius. In Japan's case, Kazuhiko Inoue, AKA Kakashi.
- Adam Westing (Art)
- Adaptation Expansion (The book is essentially the middle part of the movie with the searching for grandpa's teeth and the dinner. A few things actually got cut from the book like several family members, a pillow fight and slumber party. The book itself was expanded shortly before the movie came out with stuff like the dinosaur and some totally new material like an indoor Snowball Fight)
- AI is a Crapshoot (Doris)
- All Animals Are Dogs (Tiny the Tyrannosaur once the Mini Doris controlling him is removed)
- Arc Words ("Keep Moving Forward")
- Badass Family
- Bad Future
- Big No (When Lewis learns of Doris' rise to power)
- Buffy Speak: From Bowler Hat Guy. "All our hopes and dreams are dashed like the many pieces of a broken machiny thing..."
- Catch Phrase
- Crossdressing Voices (Tallulah)
- Cyber Cyclops: Doris
- Dastardly Whiplash (Bowler Hat Guy)
- Deadpan Snarker (Goob is one until he takes the advice of his future self)
- Disney Death (Carl)
- Doorstop Baby (Lewis)
- Dystopia
- Ensemble Darkhorse (Tiny)
- Emotionless Girl (Lizzie)
- Executive Meddling (In a good way. When Disney bought Pixar and John Lasseter took charge of Walt Disney Feature Animation as well, about a third of the movie was redone to improve on the story. However the old guard about revolted at it and openly expressed to the press that they hoped the film would bomb.)
- Food Fight (complete with Japanese style, low budget, poorly dubbed lipsyching.)
- Future Badass (In the distopian alterna-future. You know they're Future Badass because the ladies all sport black lipstick. Otherwise, they're just hat-zombies.)
- Gadgeteer Genius (AKA boy genius, child prodigy, whiz kid....Lewis graduates college at fourteen.)
- Genki Girl (A scientist. Yes, really. The fact that she invented a caffiene patch doesn't help matters.)
- Ghibli Hills (Surrounding the Future City, with the Robinson house on top of one of them)
- Hard Work Montage
- Happily Adopted ( Wilbur manages to find a family in the end. As the movie shows, he grows to love every weird bit of it.)
- Heartwarming Orphan
- Hey Its That Voice (Franny grows up from sounding like Toph to sounding like Shego.)
- Homemade Inventions (Because you can totally crack the hippocampus with a TV screen, a fan, a vacuum cleaner, a bottle of Mountain Dew and a Discman. Oh, and really comfy headphones.)
- Intelligible Unintelligible (Doris)
- Is It Always Like This? (Short answer: yes.)
- It Runs in the Family (What is "it?" Insanity, probably. And it runs in about four different actual families.)
- Just Between You And Me
- Meanwhile In the Future (Happens twice. At least.)
- Midair Repair
- Missing Mom
- Kid From The Future. (Wilbur Robinson)
- No New Fashions In The Future (We have flying cars and robot buddies and bubblevators, but all the cool kids wear T-shirts, jeans and Converse All-Stars. Huh.)
- Well, a few of the characters do wear Jetsons-like jumpsuits. But T-Shirts and Jeans have lasted out the better part of 50+ years, so there's no reason not to think they can do it for another 20.
- Only Known By Their Nickname (Bowler Hat Guy doesn't get a name until about 2/3 of the way through the movie, for spoileriffic reasons.)
- Only Six Faces (A lot of minor characters have similar character models and even a few main character models are reused with Art's appearing in Midtown University and Franny's model also serving as Lewis' mother)
- Planet of Hats (...literally.)
- Quirky Household
- Ripple Effect Proof Memory
- Robot Buddy (Carl)
- Robot Names (DOR-15, pronounced "Doris")
- San Dimas Time
- Science Fair
- Shout Out (Todayland in the Future City consists of Space Mountain and the old Astro Jets ride from Disneyland. In a deleted scene on the DVD, Carl has Winnie the Pooh stationery)
- Start Of Darkness (Goob)
- Stereo Fibbing (when Franny asks Lewis how he and Wilbur met)
- Strong Family Resemblance
- Telescoping Robot (Carl)
- Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
- Time Machine
- Time Police (Specifically, the Time Continuum Task Force)
- Timey Wimey Ball
- Unreliable Voiceover (when Bowler Hat Guy is recounting his backstory)
- Zeerust
There was also a console game that served as a midquel that mostly averted
The Problem With Licensed Games. The game's plot expands Wilbur's efforts in trying to get the stolen time machine back from Bowler Hat Guy. When arriving at the Science Fair though, he accidentally alters the timeline drastically just by opening the door into Stanley's face. As a result, Stanley and another student,Lizzie, become dueling supervillains, and Wilbur has to get his own time machine back from their forces in order to go back and fix things.
Tropes used in the game include:
