Remember the scene in The Lion King where Timon says, "what do you want me to do--dress in drag and do the hula?" At some point, Disney's animated movies went from occasionally including a goofy, unexpected non-sequitor joke like that one to becoming all about them. Looking at Disney's recent computer-animated features, Chicken Little and now Meet the Robinsons, you'd think that the Genie from Aladdin was put in charge of scripting the gags. Fortunately, though, with Meet the Robinsons, the movie has an otherwise great story, genuinely sweet, emotional core, and plenty of other redeeming attributes that leave it a satisfying but flawed film with the rampant non-sequitor "jokes" merely being annoying hiccups along the way.

The "moral" of Meet the Robinsons is "Keep Moving Forward." You will be reminded of this phrase many times throughout the film to the point where you will almost stop caring, but it's actually quite a good message and how it plays into the lives of the main characters gives it a redeeming quality that justifies its repetition in the film.

The story's protagonist, 12-year-old orphan Lewis, is a kid obsessed with two things: 1) inventing and 2) finding out who his real mom was. He becomes so enwrapped in trying to uncover the mysteries of his past that he nearly gives up on his future. The villain, simply named "Bowler Hat Guy," is also obsessed with the past, to the point where it already has ruined his life. Thus the dangers of refusing to "keep moving forward" are presented quite clearly.

When Lewis starts getting too hung up on the past, a visitor from the future comes to rescue him. Wilbur Robinson whisks Lewis away in a time machine to the future where Lewis meets the rest of Wilbur's family, the titular Robinsons.

Now, I can understand what the filmmakers were going for here, but they missed the mark for me personally. The Robinsons are an odd clan of kid-like adults that are meant to come across as a family any kid would be excited to be a part of. The problem is that adults in the audience will be turned off to them almost immediately.

"Weird for the sake of weird" takes the place of "fun" here when one character has a woodchuck chewing on his sleeve for no apparent reason, characters pop put of a toilet when they are "lost" in the house, and dueling heads in a planter bicker over a doorbell-pushing contest's rules. At one point it's revealed that one of the Robinsons is married to a wooden puppet and somehow they have two human children together. How this works is never explained in the movie (or in the director's commentary) and is deeply frightening to me. Toss in a squid butler who can somehow survive without a drop of water around, and a wise-cracking robot that comes across as "Genie-lite," and it becomes obvious that while the filmmakers were going for "quirky" and "childlike" with the Robinsons; they end up with, well, "off-putting" and "stupid."