good back-story, and good acting

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This movie had a lot to live up to. Forbidden Planet while not being my favorite sci-fi film is still a respectable title for how much it has contributed to the genre with Robby the Robot and it's hand-crafted martian landscapes and strange immersive soundtrack, but this film is completely predictable and makes absolutely no sense. The story begins when a curious boy finds Robby the Robot and fixes him up. My first question is how is this kid able to rebuild a robot?! He is five! Even for a science fiction film this seems extremely absurd. The boy connects Robby to the super computer without any adult supervision. I get it this is a FICTIONAL story, but who the hell would let a kid mess around with a government super-computer?! Anyways, the kid ends up evading US Troops and enters a rocket which somehow flies to space. The computer takes control of Robby and Robby almost kills the kid until the father of the boy finally turns off the supercomputer. Two words COMMON SENSE those are two things this movie lacks. The only good thing is the music and Robby the Robot. I believe this is a sequel to Forbidden Planet since it was on the BluRay disc as an extra. If this was a sequel to that film then OH BOY THEY MESSED UP!

A ten-year-old boy (Richard Eyer) and Robby the Robot team up to prevent a Super Computer from controlling the Earth from a satellite.I just wanted to call attention to the Les Baxter score. Not saying it is remarkable, but Baxter did some great work back in the day and I feel he should be recognized for his contributions.What I love about these old science fiction films is the nonsense put in them that seems silly by today's standards. Somehow they managed to build a computer that holds all the world's knowledge... before they figured out how to launch a satellite into space. Pretty strange.If only they had made more movies with Robby the Robot... Robby in the future could have found the Robby of the past!

This film was charming to review and gives us some of the 50's thoughts and fears. It is charming because it shows us a nuclear family with precocious son of a government rocket scientist. The son's casting is another of Hollywood's predilection with red haired and freckle-faced son/ actors mid-America types that goes to Ron 'Opie Taylor' Howard, today. Another gem of this film is the appearance of 'Robby the Robot' an icon of 50's sci-fi films. This robot's first appearance was in the epic 'Forbidden Planet'. However in this film Robby has a more sinister role by being the unwilling agent of the super computer. The large cast of important roles does a nice job in building the suspense. The super computer trying to taking over worldwide humanity is a well-used film theme with the best redo in "Colossus, the Forbin Project", "2001", and a few more. The ending of the film taking place aboard the spaceship is somewhat unsatisfactory and hard to accept. But then the film's ending is also vintage 50's family sitcom's 'happy ending'.

"The Invisible Boy" isn't so much a sequel to "Forbidden Planet" (though the script makes it clear that Robby is the same robot, stolen by a time-traveling mathematician) as it is a sequel to Robby's appearance in "Forbidden Planet".Everyone loves Robby. When I reviewed the Heath HERO 2000 robot for a magazine 20 years ago (has it been that long?), I wanted to use the photo of Robby holding the dead Warren Stevens, with the caption "I love you, Robby." But MGM's licensing fees were too high.One can criticize many points of plot and characterization, * but the film's main problem is that Robby is no longer Robby. Though Marvin Miller still provides the voice, Robby's lines are (mostly) flat and his demeanor deferential. The droll sarcasm of Dr. Morbius's creation is gone. Robby is now a victim of the supercomputer's evil plot, his personality so drastically altered that he considers killing Dr. Merinoe (but stops, presumably because Merinoe is the only source of the unlocking code). Robby is no longer the independent automaton so appealing in the earlier film, but unsympathetic and even boring.There is one surprising moment (which ought to have gotten the film a PG rating) when the supercomputer threatens to command Robby to torture Timmy unless Dr. Merinoe supplies the unlocking code -- and he refuses! I've been watching films for over 50 years (and I saw "The Invisible Boy" in first run), but I can't think of ANY film (or TV show) I've seen with such a scene. The hero ALWAYS acquiesces, protecting one or two individuals to the possible detriment of millions."The Invisible Boy" isn't a bad film, but it's more "cute" than disturbing, and hardly the film Robby's fans wanted.* Example: If the story is supposed to be contemporary, then the supercomputer would have had to have been built in the '30s! Given the film's obviously tight budget, there was no way to create a plausible late-20th-century environment, so this point was simply ignored.