BASED on the book A Day With Wilbur Robinson by William Joyce, Disney's latest state-of-the-art, computer animated feature is a triumph of style over substance, and technical might over emotional subtlety.

To say that Stephen Anderson's film is madcap and zany would be an understatement - Meet the Robinsons heaves at the seams with more weird characters, plot twists, clever contraptions and ideas than can be comfortably contained in 101 minutes.

If the protagonists were remotely engaging, watching the film would be an exhausting experience. Thankfully then, the seven screenwriters pull the film in so many different directions, and us with it, that this fast and frenzied time-travelling yarn unfolds as a blur.

The diminutive hero is orphaned boy genius Lewis (voiced by Daniel Hansen and Jordan Fry), who has a passion for technology and is completely immersed in his fantasy world of ingenious devices and gizmos, to the dismay of orphanage manager Mildred (Angela Bassett).

Convinced that his future happiness depends on tracking down his biological mother, Lewis creates a Memory Scanner to extract long buried memories of the parent he has never known.

"I have to find her Mildred and when I do, she'll take me back,'' he says.

The first demonstration of Lewis's creation goes spectacularly awry after a mysterious figure called Bowler Hat Guy (Stephen Anderson) sabotages the scanner, before appropriating it for his own nefarious purposes.

Soon after, Lewis meets 13-year-old Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman), a visitor from the near future, who conveys the dumbstruck orphan on an unforgettable journey into a world of eye-popping technology and crazy characters.

And none are crazier than Wilbur's extended family.

Surrounded by misfits and oddballs, Lewis suddenly realises he has found his place in the world, only for Bowler Hat Guy to reappear and threaten everything that the boy holds dear.

  • See it at the Odeon and Empire.