42: Pixar and Disney did not use to be the same company--Disney just distributed Pixar's films (and owned the sequel rights). The contract never ended, but was going to run out after Ratattoile, and Steve Jobs was unhappy with Michael Eisner and so was looking for a new distributor. But then Eisner left, and Bob Iger became Disney's new CEO, and he and Steve Jobs get along a lot better—and then Disney BOUGHT Pixar (in January 2006), making Jobs Disney's largest shareholder, and John Lasseter who ran Pixar's animation is now the man in charge of Disney's animation department. (I guess you never heard this news?) So the statement "Pixar has grown up and left the nest" does not make sense—Pixar is now totally and inseparably in the nest. However, Meet the Robinsons was well into production by the time the Pixar deal was done, so any effect Lasseter had on this movie was limited to tweaks. (Oh, Karen tells me she heard on NPR that the movie was about half done, and that Lasseter took one look at it and said "this has serious problems" and thus did his best to fix them—the disjointedness in the movie probably comes from this, they said.)
It's good that the movie has a plot beyond what's in the trailers, because neither Karen nor I could tell at all what the plot was from the commercials.
