The Walt Disney animated feature Meet the Robinsons, based on William Joyce's book A Day with Wilbur Robinson, about a 12-year-old boy who travels into the future, is not a musical per se, but as this soundtrack album shows, there is plenty of music in it.
Danny Elfman composed the score, cues from which take up 29 of the disc's 53 minutes. That score is a typically eclectic
Elfman effort, with some of his characteristically sly melodies, a lovely lullaby serving as "The Prologue," some generic adventure music, and some playful, jazzy interludes, notably "Pop Quiz and the Time Machine Montage." The eight songs that bookend the background music are also eclectic, including three tunes written and two performed by
Rufus Wainwright, beginning with the
Beatlesque "Another Believer," and including a good
Rob Thomas number, "Little Wonders"; some neo-traditional jazz by
Jamie Cullum, who covers the 1945 hit "Give Me the Simple Life"; and "Kids of the Future," a rewrite of
Kim Wilde's 1982 pop/rock hit "Kids in America," performed by
Jonas Brothers.
The All-American Rejects (not the kind of band name you might expect to see on a Disney project) and
They Might Be Giants also turn up. They help make this a more varied effort than that usually heard on a soundtrack for a children's movie. ~ William Ruhlmann