Meet the Robinsons
December 2007 Reviewed by: Doug Blackburn Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Disney is back with yet another orphan as the main character, but this orphan, Lewis Robinson, is more interested in inventing than being adopted. His first invention becomes a turning point in history, and to keep history on track, he is whisked off to the future in order to convince him he really does need to finish and demonstrate his first invention to prevent the future from turning bleak. The story is reasonably entertaining and holds up under repeated viewings, but it’s not in the top tier of Disney animation features. This one had a normal film release in theaters as well as a Disney Digital 3D release to many digital-cinema-equipped theaters. I saw the movie in 3D and it was quite impressive. But even in 2D, this Blu-ray disc is of reference quality.

The images are extraordinary at times. The color, sharpness, tonal gradations, reflective surfaces, and surface textures are remarkable. The time-travel runabouts are particularly stunning, with highly reflective painted surfaces, reflections in chrome, and an amazing amount of detail. They appear to be real objects at times. The movie is terrific-looking from beginning to end. The future world is presented as a bright, happy place full of pastels, blue sky and green grass, but also as a dingy, brown industrial world without joy. Both visions are remarkable in their own ways. You’ll find scene after scene of demo-quality images that are grainless and full of remarkable color. Detail comes and goes. Sometimes scenes are intentionally simple with little detail in backgrounds, but more often than not there is a wealth of detail in everything.

The animators paid homage to a fair number of cinema techniques and limitations. There’s a simulated camera zoom on a dolly where the camera comes in while the dolly is moved away from the subject. This causes the background to get larger and to go out of focus while the subject stays the same size. In a number of places the animators also simulated depth of field: the camera focuses on the subjects that are close to the camera and the background goes soft because it is no longer within the camera’s depth of field. There’s no reason to do this in animation except to mimic the limitations of the optics in film cameras. Animation doesn’t have those limitations, and everything in the frame could be in focus from inches to miles from the "camera." Surprisingly, the director makes no remarks about these moments in the commentary track. The MPEG-4/AVC 1.78:1 transfer is as flawless as I’ve seen from any high-def disc.

The sound quality breaks into the reference-quality category also. It lacks heavy use of LFE, and it’s not the most dynamic soundtrack available, but it is very well recorded, with clarity that’s as good as Blu-ray gets. The best soundtrack is the uncompressed LPCM 5.1 with 48kHz sample rate and 24-bit resolution. The music is perfect, with great tone, spread, clarity, and spaciousness. In a number of scenes the music, dialogue, sound effects, and Foley work are very complex, but everything is crystal clear and you can follow any element carefully to hear just how well done it is all the way through the scene.

Extras include an interesting director commentary, a lighthearted but shallow standard-def "Inventions that Shaped the World" feature, an HD "Inventing the Robinsons" concept-to-creation feature, a 5.1 soundtrack with effects only (no music or dialogue), and two toss-away games. There’s also Disney’s "Movie Showcase," where they select what they think are the highest-quality video and audio scenes from the movie for you. Their choices are pretty good.

This disc is the first I have encountered that has what can only be described as intelligent use of Blu-Java. Blu-ray users are familiar with certain titles that take up to two minutes to load the disc before anything happens. That’s due to Blu-Java, which is only needed for games and interactive features. You don’t need it for menus or for watching the movie. On this disc, Disney does not load Blu-Java unless you select one of the two games on the disc. That means no long load time just to get to the movie itself. This should be mandatory for all future Blu-Java releases. In addition, this disc permits skipping all the commercials and previews at the beginning by pressing the Menu button on the remote. More kudos for that!

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