Lewis is a young aspiring inventor and current orphan, who has created technology that seems to fail time

after time. He
stays up throughout the night for countless nights, keeping his roommate Goob awake night after night. After being
rejected by potential guardians 124 times, Lewis decides to create a memory scanner for a science fair in order to see his
mothers face right before she left him at the orphanage's doorstep. While setting up for the science fail, Lewis meets a
boy named Wilbur Robinson, who is mysteriously occurred out of nowhere. Wilbur warns Louis about a tall man in a
bowler hat, advising Lewis to stay away from him. Wilbur is then distracted, and the man with a robotic bowler hat gets
to Lewis's memory scanner and sabotages it, unscrewing some screws to make the invention look like another failure.
Lewis then tries to demonstrate the scanner, but this demonstration fails due to the screws that were secretly taken out.
Lewis loses all hope in his invention and storms out with Wilbur following him. The tall man with the bowler hat puts the
memory scanner back together, then steals it quietly.

Later on, Lewis is shown feeling really down about his failed attempt to see his mothers face. Wilbur, who followed
Lewis to the orphanage, admits to being a visitor from the future. Wilbur talks Lewis into repairing the memory scanner
and giving it another shot, but in return he has to prove to Lewis that he is telling the truth about being from the future.
As Wilbur gives Lewis a tour of the future in his time machine, Lewis decides to take over and attempt to meet his mom
using the time machine instead of following through with his promise to Wilbur. He fails, and crashes the time machine,
causing him to be stuck in the future. Wilbur becomes scared, realizing that he will be in a lot of trouble if he doesn't get
Louis back to his time. He ask Lewis stay hidden and to fix the time machine, and in return, Louis ask Wilbur to take him
to see his mother afterwards. They both agree, and Wilbur leaves Lewis in the garage. However, Lewis does not stay
there for long. Lewis ends up meeting all of Wilbur's family while in disguise except Wilbur's father, Cornelius.

Wilbur gets Lewis back to the garage and they both start to work on fixing the time machine. Lewis finishes, and him
and Wilbur decide to test it out, but soon find out that Lewis failed once again. Right after Lewis get discouraged again,
Wilbur's mom calls both of the boys up for dinner. At the dinner table, the Robinson family welcomes Lewis into their
home with loving arms. While serving dinner, one of the futuristic serving tools breaks down and the Robinsons beg
Lewis to fix it. Lewis tries to fix it, and after failing he starts to get discouraged once again. However, the Robinsons
congratulate and comfort Lewis for failing, telling him that one learns more from failing than from immediately
succeeding.

The tall man with the robotic bowler hat had followed Lewis and Wilbur back to the future after unsuccessfully
presenting the memory scanner to a board of directors for a large invention company to obtain credit for it. The tall man
and the bowler hat's plan is to kidnap Lewis and to get him to fix the newly broken memory scanner. The man brings a
dinosaur back to the future, and decides to have the dinosaur snatch Lewis away from the Robinsons during dinner.
Lewis and Wilbur fight off the dinosaur and Wilbur realized that the dinosaur was hypnotized by the bowler hat. After
the dinosaur is un-hypnotized, Lewis is in awe because the Robinsons had all sacrificed their lives for him. Wilbur's
mother and the rest of the family verbally offer to adopt Lewis, but shortly change their minds once they realize Lewis
comes out of disguise. Wilbur takes the blame, and also admits that he had lied to Lewis when he had promised that he
would take Lewis back to see his mother. Lewis then runs away hurt and feeling betrayed by Wilbur.

When Lewis runs away, the tall man and the boiler hat come to his "rescue" and promise to really take him back to
see his mother if he fixes the memory scanner and tells them how to use it. Out of anger towards Wilbur, Lewis agrees
and heads back to the past to fix the memory scanner, not realizing that the tall man was crossing his fingers as he made
his promise (which traditionally cancels the deal). Lewis fixes the memory scanner and tells them how to work it, then
the tall man and the robotic bowler hat capture Lewis and tie him down to a chair, telling him their evil plan. The tall
man reveals himself as the future Goob, Lewis's roommate at the orphanage. He also tells Louis that Lewis is actually
Wilbur's father, which is why the Robinson family changed their mind about adopting him and needed him back into the
past. Furure Goob tells Lewis that he seeked revenge for him because Lewis kept him up the night before a very
important little league baseball game, causing his team to lose in the ninth inning because Goob fell asleep and missed
the winning catch. He goes on to explain that he met the bowler hat, who's named Dorris after the future Lewis had
invented and then later on shut down the hat due to evil doings committed by the hat. Dorris the bowler hat had
escaped and found Goob, and together they both seeked revenge toward Lewis. They created a plan to steal a time
machine and go to the past to sabotage Lewis's memory scanner and take credit for it when they present it to the board
of directors for the large invention company.

After Goob reveals all of this new information to Lewis, he and the bowler hat exit with the memory scanner and
Lewis runs away with the scanner while Goob and Dorris are not looking. Dorris and Goob eventually gained possession
of the scanner again and instantly went back into the past. Wilbur, who caught back up with Lewis, encourages Lewis to
fix the time machine before things get worst, however while he was speaking Wilbur disappeared as if he never existed.
Lewis realizes that lifes event are changing now that Goob and Dorris had taken credit of the scanner. It turns out that
Dorris was using Goob to be the human figure to present the scanner to the invention company. Dorris had gotten Goob
to pursuae the company to mass produce millions of clones of Dorris, which will eventually take over the world.

After Lewis witnesses what Dorris's personal evil plan was, he fixes the time machine and travels back to the day and
location where Goob and Dorris meet with the board of directors. Lewis tries to inform Goob of Dorris's true intention,
but Dorris then tries to attack Lewis to stop Goob from finding out the truth. Lewis then uses his ability of changing the
future to stop Dorris by taking back the moment he had invented Dorris. The bowler hat then disappears and Lewis
takes Boob on a journey to the future before things go back from being good again from evil. Goob realizes that he
should have let go of his hatred for Lewis, and leaves Lewis once Wilbur is existent again.

As Lewis says his goodbyes to the Robinson family, he finally gets to meet Cornelius, his future self. Cornelius takes
Lewis on a tour through his laboratory, which installed everlasting confidence into Lewis's mind. Lewis received some
tips from the family before Wilbur took him back to the science fair in the past. After Lewis and Wilbur leave the future,
Wilbur takes Lewis back to the day that Lewis's mother had left him on the doorstep. Lewis almost stops his mom from
leaving him, but then stops and hides, letting her leave him as an orphan. When Lewis returned to the time machine,
Wilbur asks why did he just let her go. Lewis responded, saying that he already has a family waiting for him in the future.
Wilbur takes Lewis back to the science fair, and after they say their goodbyes Lewis rushes to the baseball game in order
to wake Goob up in the ninth inning so he can make the winning catch. Lewis then leaves the game and gets back to the
science fail where he successfully demonstrates his memory scanner to the judges. He ends up winning the fair in first
place, and he meets his adoptive parents and future wife all at that instant. The movie ends with a quote made by the
late Walt Disney that included the term "Keep Moving Forward."