Meet The Robinsons: In Disney Digital 3-D (2007)

Lewis is a brilliant inventor with a surprising number of clever inventions to his credit. His latest and most ambitious project is the Memory Scanner, a machine that will help him find his birth mother so they can become a family. But before he can find her, his invention is stolen by the dastardly Bowler Hat Guy and his diabolical hat and constant companion, Doris. Lewis has all but given up hope when a mysterious stranger named Wilbur Robinson whisks our bewildered hero away in a time machine and together they team up to track down Bowler Hat Guy with a little help from the Robinsons, Wilbur's excentric family from the future and hilaruty ensues.

Trivia: This is the third animated Disney movie to receive the Disney Digital 3-D treatment (after Chicken Little and a remastered The Nightmare Before Christmas [which is being released again this year]). The movie is projected digitally, with a single Christie, Barco or NEC DLP projector (other digital projection technologies would work as well if fitted with the proper equipment) at 144 frames per second, six times as fast as a normal movie. Every 1/24th of a second (the projection frame rate for normal 2-D movies on film) the two scene views called "right eye" and "left eye" are each shown 3 times (6 flashes of image on the screen matching the 6-times-higher projection rate), giving each eye a flicker-free image. In front of the projector lens, an electronic device, the Z-Screen, developed by Lenny Lipton, from Stereographics, inserts a polarizing screen that matches the polarization of either the right lens or left lens of the glasses worn by the audience. When the left-eye-matching Z-Screen is in place, the viewer's right eye sees nothing at all (or almost nothing) while the left eye sees a normal looking frame. For the next frame of the movie, the Z-Screen swaps the polarizing screen to match the right eye lens in the glasses worn by the audience. Now the audience sees nothing (or nearly nothing) with the left eye and a normal but slightly shifted version of the frame in the right eye. The brain knits together the alternating left-right perspectives into a seamless 3-D view of the movie scene.

This is the second movie I have seen in Disney Digital 3-D and I am still impressed (the other one was The Nightmare Before Christmas). The image is very smooth and you don't see the echo ghosts that you used to see before. As for the story, it is cute and has its moments (even for grown ups). One very funny part is when Lewis is reviewing the Robinsons he has met with Wilbur (slide show style) and comes to Mr. Robinson, whom we have not met, and he asks Wilbur what Mr. Robinson looks like and Wilbur replies "Tom Selleck", so Mr. Robinson's picture is replaced with Tom Selleck's. Later, when we meet Mr. Robinson, though he doesn't look like Tom Selleck, he sure sounds like him. So if you have movie age children, or just want to see good 3-D, this movie is for you.