It's impossible for me to talk about Meet the Robinsons without mentioning my expectations and the behind-the-scenes role John Lasseter played in shaping this movie. I was dreading the film, as it was Disney's follow-up to the creatively bankrupt Chicken Little, the supposed sounding call for the death of traditional 2-D animation at the studio. Early ads for Robinsons promised more of the same -- wacky, frenetic comedy that followed the lead of rival action-oriented 3-D animated pics, with little evidence of its own soul.

Then there was hope. News stories reported an intervention by Lasseter, the Pixar creative leader who was recently made head of Disney's animation. Like an answer to a prayer, Lasseter declared the studio would return to traditional hand-drawn animation, but in the meantime Meet the Robinsons was in its finishing stages, so he and his crew gave it a look. Reports said their notes came with suggestions for major revisions. In any case, whatever the degree of overhaul it went through, the completed movie arrived, and I was now looking forward to it with much reservation -- surely if the film required fixing, Lasseter and his team would know how to fix it, but would it really make the movie that much better?

Color me happily surprised. Meet the Robinsons still has its moments of wacky, frenetic comedy, but it's strongly counter-balanced by a believable emotional thread. The movie appears on the surface to be about a crazy family of the future, and it threatens to make their antics the main hook of the story, but what's actually presented is the story of an orphan who has trouble getting adopted. The hero also happens to be a budding inventor, and somehow this gets him mixed up in a time-travel adventure, but the core of the lonely kid looking for success and accceptance is always there, front and center.

Yes, the search for a family may not be very original -- in fact, I might call it the least original theme in any animated movie these days. However, Robinsons succeeds not in what it delivers but in how it delivers the material. If Lasseter proved anything with his last film, Cars, it was that he could milk a corny theme for all it's worth. The techniques employed are uncanny -- they emphasize the struggle to be accepted and understood, and when the payoff comes at the end, it's always accompanied by a communal sense of giving and selflessness. There's a careful stripping away of any true meanness that might come with the humor; thus, the effect is one of sincerity, and, as a result, credibility.

That effect seems so familiar now it almost has to be labeled the "Pixar touch." Is it presumptuous to give Lasseter all the credit for Robinsons working as well as it does? The public may never truly know how much of it was Pixar repair job and how much was the original vision of director Stephen J. Anderson. But from what I can tell, Meet the Robinsons had a lot of potential to go way out of control. The family introduction sequence -- a lightning-fast blur of over-the-top nutty characters -- gives reason to suspect that; it's all in the title, right? Some intentions might have been modified -- check out the face of the main villain and tell me if you believe his major character revelation was originally planned. And it's in 3-D (you know, requiring 3-D glasses), and there are singing frogs, and a centerpiece action sequence featuring, for pretty much no reason, a T-Rex.

And yet the movie boasts that undeniable Pixar touch, keeping all the craziness emotionally anchored, like tethering a tornado. So whatever happened, whatever the movie had to go through to become what it is now, it works -- maybe not entirely seamlessly, but Meet the Robinsons definitely works.

(Released by Buena Vista Pictures and rated "G" for general audiences.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.