YMMV / Meet the Robinsons

• Abandon Shipping: When the movie came out, people started shipping Lewis with Wilbur. The minute people watched the whole movie and found out they were actually father and son, absolutely all shipping went right out the window.
• Accidental Aesop:
  • Despite turning the primary Aesop into a Broken Aesop, it is still pointed out that while or using a future for yourself is great, you should not be so obsessed with it that you affect others around you. The whole conflict came from Lewis being completely oblivious that his obsession with creating his memory scanner has negatively impacted Goob’s physical and mental health that transformed him into the Bowler Hat Guy.
  • It can still co-exist with the central Aesop however since it and many other actions which unwittingly shape the film's events can also be interpreted as thinking forward not being the same as thoughtlessly ignoring the consequences of past and present. After all making a good future still involves good foresight and learning from past mistakes. Noticeably, Bowler Hat Guy, with his one-track focusing on the past and his future goal of getting revenge, has neither quality.
  • Obsession and anger not only can hurt but make you easier to manipulate by someone who doesn't have your best interests at heart. By letting his anger get the better of him, the Bowler Hat Guy allowed Doris to use him into allowing her to conquer the world and kill him once she no longer needed him. Doris in turn is brought down by being wrathful enough to attack her future inventor, dooming her existance.
• Adaptation Displacement: Most people don't realize that this movie was based off a book, but this is somewhat-understandable due to the fact that the movie is only a very loose adaptation.
• Adorkable: The main character Lewis's Nerd Glasses, Youthful Freckles, Determinator tendencies, expressions, ideas of being adopted, and methods to improve the world make him quite dorky yet adorable.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Fritz and Petunia's relationship. Is Fritz simply a Cloudcuckoolander for his wife? Or did his wife pass away and the puppet is simply his way of keeping her alive for himself and their children? Some fans interpret that Fritz once had a wife (explaining their two biological children with matching red hair) but she had left him or passed away, and the talking puppet is merely a means as to keep her 'alive' in their family or it could be Fritz's Sanity Slippage.
  • Is the puppet Petunia capable of talking and moving on its own, or does Fritz have to move her around? Based on Wilbur calling Petunia 'cranky', it seems to be a bit of an open secret among the Robinsons.
  • Lewis saying he's never going to invent the hat is up to interpretation too. While the implication is clear that he's never going to invent "Helping Hats", the product itself seemed to work just fine, and Doris was just a newer model that went rogue. Lewis could very well intend to make "Helping Hats" in the future, just not the model that Doris ends up being.
  • Near the end of the film, Doris tried to kill Lewis after he told the Bowler Hat Guy of her plans. But if she had killed him, she would have been erased from existence herself since Lewis would invent her in the future and killing him before he had the chance to invent her would have precluded her existence altogether. Did she just not think this through or was she Driven to Suicide because of her plans being ruined and decided to kill Lewis because she wanted him dead too?
  • Wilbur takes Lewis back to see his mother at the end of the film. Was it because he genuinely wanted to make good on his promise to Lewis beforehand or was it a Secret Test of Character to see if Lewis learned something from the whole ordeal?
• Anvilicious: Anyone who watched the movie without realizing that the Aesop of the story is "keep moving forward" clearly wasn't paying attention. It is repeated over and over again both directly and thematically.
• Award Snub: Meet the Robinsons was the last Disney film until Strange World to not receive any Academy Award nominations, and considering how much of a Cult Classic it is among Disney fans for its strong themes and characters that had successful DVD sales, many were left puzzled as to how it didn't receive a single nomination when it's generally considered much better than most of Disney's Experimental Era.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Alternative Foreign Theme Song "Hitomi Hiraite" by Mitsuki is quite beautiful. Especially if you know the meaning of the lyrics and think of the story of the movie.
  • And of course, the ending theme, "Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas.
  • The song near the beginning, "Another Believer" by Rufus Wainwright, is nothing to sneeze at either.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The fact that Lewis's hair would somehow be a dead giveaway to the family that he's from the past, Wilbur doesn't really reveal what Cornelius looks like, Lewis and Cornelius both being inventors, and them both creating a PB&J gun, makes it kind of easy to figure out that Lewis and Cornelius are the same person. You may miss it if you're a kid, but if you watch the movie while being a bit older, you'll probably figure it out.
• Crossover Ship: It's common, especially in fanfiction, to find Wilbur being shipped with Violet Parr from The Incredibles.
• Cult Classic: Definitely considered one of Disney's most underrated films, with its quirky characters and heartwarming story winning over plenty of fans in recent years. It also helps that it did very well in DVD sales.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Tiny. Retroactively.
  • Carl, the neurotic, awesome, intelligent robot butler.
  • The Tarantino-esque Frank Sinatra singing gangster frogs.
  • Lizzie, the girl with the fire ant display which will only bite her enemies.
  • And, of course, Franny. Partly for being a super cool, adult tomboy, but mostly for being drop dead gorgeous.
• Fandom VIP: Elena and Olivia Ceballos, twins behind the account "ELIOLI Art," are huge in the fandom, and it is guaranteed that you'll come across their copious amount of fanart for the movie.
• Growing the Beard: While the movie has its rough edges, Meet the Robinsons is now looked at as the start of the "Lasseter Era" and the turning point of redemption during Disney Animation's Audience-Alienating Era, much like The Great Mouse Detective before it. ''Keep Moving Forward", indeed.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The "Keep moving forward" aesop becomes this as after the Lasseter Era ended, Disney has become nothing short of obstinate to move on to new projects and resorts to sequels and rehashes of virtually every franchise they ever made to the infuriation of long time fans.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Bowler Hat Guy must not be a fan of Frozen (2013), as he advises Goob "DON'T let it go." Becomes more hilarious when you find out the voice of Bowler Hat Guy also voices Kai (one of the royal family's servants) in Frozen.
  • Bowler Hat Guy's unicorn binder was probably meant to show that he never grew up emotionally, but as of 2010 he could be identified as a brony. The fact that his male classmate compliments him on how cool his binder is just reinforces this interpretation.
  • Controlling a T. rex and a frog using a comically small hat would become more popular one decade after the film.
  • This won't be the last time we see frogs in suits.
  • The joke about no one knowing how Spike and Dimitri are related to the rest of the family despite knowing they're Robinsons becomes this as with ancestry testing becoming more accessible in The New '10s, it is more likely for something like this to happen.
  • Bowler Hat Guy's Harmless Villain tendencies, angular features, and his turn to evil over incredibly petty grievances in his childhood heavily parallels another Disney character who would debut later in the same year. Any more similarities and we'd probably have to rename Doris the Bowler Hat-Inator!
  • Laurie Metcalf voices Lucille Krunklehorn, who becomes the mother of a genius. Months after Meet the Robinsons released, she began playing Mary Cooper on the long-running The Big Bang Theory, the mother of a much more insufferable genius.
• Ho Yay: The budding friendship Wilbur has with Lewis. Later becomes No Yay when the two are revealed to be father and future son.
• Inferred Holocaust: During the ending. Lewis waking Goob up in time to catch the ball and win the game looks happy on the surface, until you realize Lewis has just wiped out Bowler Hat Guy's Dark and Troubled Past, so not only will Bowler Hat Guy never learn to Keep Moving Forward, he's suffered a complete Ret-Gone.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Bowler Hat Guy, aka Goob, undoubtedly ruined his life by letting one dumb thing consume him. But his sadness when he realized Doris was using him and his walking off not knowing what to do with his life, punctuated by a small question mark in his journal, makes you feel pity for him.
• LGBT Fanbase: Coach has a fair amount of bara fanart, thanks in no small part to his muscular design and his really tight and surprisingly revealing gym uniform.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I have a big head and little arms!" ^ExplanationA "line" uttered by the T. rex Bowler Hat Guy plucked from the past when it can't get at Lewis. Upon Bowler Hat Guy chastising it for not seizing the boy, it leads off explaining why this isn't working with the line you see. The line caught on almost immediately thanks to how silly the declaration is, considering what's saying it and how it's basically kind of cursing its own anatomy.
  • "They all hated me." ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}During Bowler Hat Guy's/Goob's explanation of how Lewis ruined his life, he says this line... right after a scene showing several students happily showing interest in being friends with a younger Goob, providing a hilarious contrast with the narration as Bowler Hat Guy tries to paint his life as being utterly miserable.
  • "That is an excellent question." ^ExplanationA phrase that Wilbur uses no less than four times over the course of the movie (if you're willing to count his declaration of "Another excellent question!" as he's running to the transport tube), to the point where you'd think it was his catchphrase.
  • "Mr. Steak, you're my only friend." ^ExplanationNot long after Goob returns to the orphanage with a black eye from his baseball team and meeting the Bowler Hat Guy, Goob says this line while hugging the steak he's using to soothe his eye like a security blanket. This line often gets some use for more Woobie-type characters.
  • "Keep moving forward." ^ExplanationThe film's Arc Words, taken from a Walt Disney quote.
  • "Good day, gentleman. I am here to change the future." ^ExplanationThis is what Bowler Hat Guy says to a receptionist during the film, although he actually says "Good day, madame. I'm here to change the future". It became a meme in 2019, often as a way of talking about changing things.
    • "belo dia senhores, eu me caguei"^ExplanationMeaning Good day gentleman, I shat myself in portuguese. A modified version of the Bowler Hat Guy says but used by Brazilians when something scared you.
  • Tekken^ExplanationOne piece of promotional art for the film depicts Wilbur grinning alongside Grampa Bud. Given the characters have hairstyles and face shapes resembling Kazuya Mishima and Heihachi Mishima, respectively, some people have slapped the Tekken logo onto it to exaggerate the resemblance. Taken further by likening Lewis to Paul Phoenix, due to their tall blond hair.
• Moral Event Horizon: Doris gets one when she brutally murders Carl in order to steal the memory machine back. This foreshadows what happens to the future as a result of her and Bowler Hat Guy changing it very well. Fortunately both of these events get an in-universe Ret-Gone.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The home console version is a rather good action adventure game that is a prequel to the movie. There's also the Nintendo DS version, which is a third-person shooter with a simplified version of the console game's plot that's pretty fun but got flack for its short length.
• No Yay:
  • Bowler Hat Guy's creepy yet homicidal obsession with Lewis.
  • Any shipping between Wilbur and Lewis gets tossed out the window when it's revealed that they are father and son.
• One-Scene Wonder: Cornelius/Future!Lewis. He appears only in one of the last scenes in the movie, but he certainly makes his screen time leave an impact for what time he does have.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Game Boy Advance version of the game, which is a mediocre game that switches between side-scrolling action stages and top-down puzzle-oriented stages.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • At the science fair, Wilbur knocks over a box full of frogs and their owner makes him pick them all up. He isn't too pleased, calls her "annoying little girl", and she warns him: "I know karate". It's hilarious on later viewings when you realize the little girl is Franny in the past, Wilbur was calling his Mom an annoying little girl, and yes, she really does know karate.
  • The very first words out of Goob's mouth consist of him blaming other people for his problems. It won't be the last time.
  • Dr. Krunkelhorn is already hilarious and memorable when she appears at the science fair. Knowing she is also Lucille Robinson, Lewis's future adoptive mother, make it all the more fun to rewatch, compare her older and younger selves, and look for foreshadowing.
• So Okay, It's Average: The movie is one of the rare examples of a decent movie actually bringing in big payoffs. As stated below, Disney was at a low point, and Meet the Robinsons proved its animated movies could still be good to watch.
• Squick:
  • At one point Lewis is almost adopted by his future wife! And he calls her "Mom"...
  • Bowler Hat Guy is wearing his Little League uniform into adulthood. And from the looks of it, he never took it off once in thirty years.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A whole family's worth; each of the Robinsons gets just enough screentime to see their persona, but not enough to really flesh them out. Mr. Enter compared it to a television pilot introducing characters with the assurance that they would get fleshed out in future episodes.
• Trailer Joke Decay: Tiny's "I have a big head and little arms!" line was spammed constantly throughout the film's advertising. It's a testament to how good of a bit it is that people still loved it despite the oversaturation.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: It's mostly attributed to how her voice is masculine, but some fans interpret Cousin Tallulah as being a trans woman, which fans see as strengthening the aesop that even non-traditional families are still to be loved.
• Win Back the Crowd: After an abysmal five years, which included closing its legendary traditional animation unit, making a terrible first impression on the All-CGI Cartoon market and very nearly losing Pixar, Disney (and a little change in management) proved to its fans that they were still capable of making good movies.
• Woolseyism: Wilbur tells Lewis that his father looks like Tom Selleck, a nod to his voice actor. In order to preserve the joke in other languages, most (but not all; the Hebrew dub, for example, doesn't) foreign dubs change Wilbur's description of Cornelius to whoever voices him in said dub (such as singer José Luis Rodriguez in Latin Spanish), as well as changing the photo of Tom Selleck.

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