For years, I heard friends telling me how stupid and utterly pointless Meet the Robinsons was or how it was simply the worst movie they had ever seen and a complete waste of time. I had listened to them and I avoided this animated film about a young scientist and his mission to rescue the future from the evil Bowler Hat Man.

So when, a couple of days ago, my sister came home with a copy of the movie, both myself and my mom—who had also heard similar reviews—groaned in despair. My sister quickly chastised us, saying that she had seen the first ten minutes of the movie about fifteen times and was determined to finish it.

So begins the story of Lewis, a young inventor who has known nothing but failure. Everything he invents fails, but that doesn't stop him from attempting to create a machine that retrieves lost memories. He is determined to find the memory of the day his mother left him on the steps of the orphanage, enabling him to ultimately find her.

But once again, he fails. He decides never again to invent anything; nothing ever works anyways. But when a young boy—claiming to be from the future—comes across Lewis' path and takes him to the future in his time machine, Lewis believes he's found the perfect way to find his mother...until the machine breaks.

Then it's up to Lewis to fix the time machine and stop the Bowler Hat Man from stealing his Memory Locater. But why?

I began watching as a skeptic, I left in awe. I honestly don't understand what my friends were thinking when they told me this film was horrible. It is the complete opposite. It's humorous, heart-warming and tear-jerking. For a children's film, this is a winner. I've never watched a film with such a good message and so many creative ways of telling it.

The lesson in Meet the Robinsons is one many people overlook when it comes to the bad circumstances in their lives. Lewis is an orphan who believes his life would be better if only he could find his mother. It never crossed his mind that maybe his life was meant to be the way it was for a reason. He couldn't see the bigger picture of what his life could turn out to be; he only saw what he thought would happen if he changed his past.

As humans, we don't have the ability to see into future to see how our lives will turn out; but we are able to remember the past and think, What if, what if, what if...

Meet the Robinsons teaches kids to stop asking, What if and start asking, What may... Looking toward the future and “keep moving forward” is the theme of this film. Instead of looking to the past and wondering what could have or should have happened, Lewis teaches children to look to the future and wonder how it could be different and better.

The entire film was inspired by the famous quote by Walt Disney which appears at the end of the film:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”