Trama

In 2007, Lewis (Jordan Fry and Daniel Hansen), an orphaned 12-year-old inventor, wants to get adopted, but his energy, eccentricity, and malfunctioning inventions frequently scare off prospective parents. He tries to show off his peanut butter application invention to parents who came to see him, but the demonstration goes wrong as the prospective father had a peanut allergy and when the invention malfunctions, it smears peanut butter on the father's face, causing it to swell up. Lewis lives in the 6th street orphanage headed by Mildred Duffy (Angela Bassett). Lewis has been rejected by 124 couples, but Mildred says that he simply hasn't found the right couple yet. Lewis knows that it is impossible to teenagers to get adopted and hence loses hope.

Lewis embarks on a mission to locate his birth mother, who left him at the orphanage when he was an infant. He conceives an invention that will scan his memories and help him identify her as he had seen her when he was an infant. He spends all of his time on the project, causing his roommate Mike "Goob" Yagoobian to stay awake for days. This makes Goob fall asleep during his important little league game.

While taking the memory scanner to his school's science fair, Lewis meets Wilbur Robinson (Wesley Singerman), a mysterious 13 year old boy who claims to be from the future. Wilbur needs to recover a time machine that a tall man wearing an evil robotic bowler hat, which he calls the "Bowler Hat Guy" (Stephen Anderson), has stolen. The sinister 'Bowler Hat Guy', sends Doris, his robotic bowler hat with mechanical arms, to sabotage Lewis' memory-scanner.

Lewis tries to demonstrate the scanner, but it has been sabotaged by the Bowler Hat Guy and falls apart, throwing the science fair into chaos. Lewis leaves while the Bowler Hat Guy steals the scanner, and Doris puts it back together again. He plans to pitch it as his own to an invention company called InventCo and manages to get an appointment with their board of directors. But he fails when he cannot figure out how to turn it on. The Bowler Hat Guy is thrown out of the building with the broken memory scanner. He now has no option but to find Lewis to get the machine fixed.

Wilbur meets Lewis at the orphanage and asks him to repair the scanner, but Lewis demands proof that Wilbur is telling the truth. Wilbur does so by taking Lewis in a second time machine (which is shaped like an airplane and has the ability to turn invisible) to the year 2037 (thirty years into the future), which is highly advanced technologically. People in the future travel in bubbles, and there are tall buildings which are erected in seconds.

When they arrive, Wilbur wants to go back in the past and to get Lewis to fix his memory scanner. Lewis says that in front of the time machine, his memory scanner is not a relevant invention. Wilbur says that the memory scanner is the key to everything. Lewis theorizes that he can simply use the time machine to go back and prevent his mother from giving him up. An ensuing argument between the boys leads to the time machine crashing. Wilbur says that there are only time machines in existence and the Bowler Hat Guy has the other one. Wilbur asks Lewis to fix the time machine, and Lewis agrees on the condition that Wilbur has to take him to visit his mother afterwards.

Reluctantly, Wilbur agrees and hides Lewis in the garage. Carl is the Wilbur family robot and admonishes Wilbur to leaving the garage door open, which led to the theft of the time machine in the first place. Lewis accidentally goes up a transportation tube into the house and ends up meeting the rest of the Robinson family. Lewis meets Wilbur's grandfather, Bud. Bud takes Lewis on a tour of the house, during which Lewis meets the rest of the fun-loving and overly eccentric Robinson family. This includes Franny (Nicole Sullivan) Cornelius' wife, Uncle Spike and Uncle Dimitri (Ethan Sandler), Aunt Petunia and her husband Fritz Robinson, and their kids Cousin Laszlo and Cousin Tallulah. Bud, Fritz and Joe are brothers. Joe's wife is Aunt Billie (Kelly Hoover). Franny's brothers are Gaston and Art.

He is not able to meet Cornelius (Tom Selleck), Wilbur's father and the inventor of the time's technologies, who is away on a business trip. Cornelius invented several futuristic inventions earlier seen, including the time machines coining the motto "Keep moving forward". Despite being provided with blueprints, Lewis is unable to repair the time machine.

The Bowler Hat Guy and Doris reach Lewis' orphanage and find out that he traveled to the future with Wilbur and go after him in their own time machine. Before leaving The Bowler Hat Guy meets Goob, who is depressed at being the cause of his team losing the baseball game. Goob blames Lewis for keeping him up all night, and the Bowler Hat Guy encourages Goob not to let this go, and to channel this disappointment into anger and a desire to take revenge.

Having followed Lewis, the Bowler Hat Guy tries to kidnap him by attacking the Robinson house with a Tyrannosaurus Rex, but the Robinsons incapacitate it. The Robinsons offer to adopt Lewis but change their mind when they learn that he is from the past. Wilbur admits to lying to Lewis about taking him back to see his mother, causing Lewis to run off in disgust.

The Bowler Hat Guy approaches Lewis and offers to take him to his mother if he fixes the memory scanner. Once he does, the Bowler Hat Guy reveals that Lewis is Wilbur's father, and that he himself is the adult version of Lewis' roommate, Mike "Goob" Yagoobian (Matthew Josten). Because he was repeatedly kept awake during Lewis' work on the scanner, Goob fell asleep during a Little League baseball game and failed to make an important catch, costing his team the championship.

Goob, having been influenced by his future self's imprudent advice, became so withdrawn and bitter that he was never adopted and remained in the orphanage long after it closed. Goob obsessed over this defeat, scaring away his chances at adoption, and stayed at the orphanage after it closed down, eventually coming to blame Lewis for his misery.

Goob initially intended to get revenge by vandalizing Robinson Industries, only to meet DOR-15 (Doris) (Ethan Sandler), a failed and abandoned invention of Cornelius'. They cooperate to steal the time machine, able to steal it because Wilbur forgot to lock the garage door and plotted to use it to capture and plagiarize Lewis's first famous invention, to ruin Lewis's career as an inventor. Lewis warns that their actions may drastically alter the future, but Goob doesn't care.

Goob and Doris prepare to present the stolen invention to InventCo in the past. Leaving Lewis in the future, they return to the past and enact their plan, successfully pitching the memory scanner and subsequently mass-producing Helping Hats. However, Doris disposes of Goob and uses the Helping Hats to enslave humanity, erasing Wilbur and turning the future into a Dystopia.

Wilbur and his robot Carl (Harland Williams) save Lewis and the memory scanner and escape. As they make their way back to the Robinson house, Doris destroys Carl and steals back the memory scanner, returning to Goob as their time machine vanishes. The scenery around Lewis and Wilbur (still in the future) darkens, and Wilbur vanishes into oblivion as history is being rewritten. The Robinsons' Utopian future is replaced by a Doris-controlled, smog-darkened industrial empire, with mankind reduced to slaves.

Lewis repairs the second time machine and uses it to go to the precise moment and location where Goob signs the contract at InventCo. Lewis confronts Goob and Doris in the past and invalidates her existence by vowing to never invent her, restoring the future and Wilbur. Lewis then shows Goob the bleak future Doris would have created, which is transformed before their eyes back into the Utopian future.

Back in Wilbur's time, Wilbur reluctantly attempts to ask Goob to join the Robinson family at Lewis' request, but he flees in shame for his actions. Lewis finally meets Cornelius, who explains how the memory scanner started their successful career and persuades Lewis to return to the science fair. Wilbur takes Lewis in the time machine but surprises him by taking him back to the night when his mother left him at the orphanage. Lewis attempts to interact with her, but ultimately decides against it, content with the knowledge of his future family.

Wilbur drops Lewis off in his own time and bids him farewell. Lewis heads to the fair, realizing he had to wake Goob up at the baseball field just in time for him to make the winning catch, averting his future. Back at the fair, Lewis asks for one more chance to demonstrate his scanner, which this time succeeds. He is adopted by Lucille Krunklehorn-Robinson (Laurie Metcalf), one of the science fair judges and a scientist at InventCo. Labs, and her husband Bud (Stephen Anderson), who nicknames him "Cornelius." Emboldened by his future family's credo of "keep moving forward," Lewis moves in with his new parents and begins his inventing career.

Just before Lewis/Cornelius drives off with Bud and Lucille, he turns around and waves at Goob, who is also leaving the orphanage with his own new family. Bud and Lucille move into the house Lewis saw further in time where he continues his inventing, fulfilling his future.