BEFORE: Ah, this was a bit of a last-minute decision - this animated feature could go HERE, or I could use it later to connect two other animated films, "Turning Red" and "Tom & Jerry", ugh, that's a tough one. Because it seems to somewhat be thematically connected to yesterday's film, both are about malfunctioning robots, so I guess it belongs here? I could just as easily delay it to connect those other films, because "The Mitchells vs the Machines" also shares an actor with tomorrow's film. But so does THIS one, so I guess screw it, I'm dropping it in, schedule be damned. I'll make it up over the weekend, I'm going to get to Mother's Day either way. Olivia Colman carries over from "The Mitchells vs the Machines".
THE PLOT: The story of Barney, an awkward middle-schooler and Ron, his new walking, talking digital device. Ron's malfunctions set against the backdrop of the social media age launch them on a journey to learn about true friendship.
AFTER: You'll often find two or more animation studios releasing films in the same year on similar themes - remember when every major animation studio had a penguin movie, and "Happy Feet", "Surf's Up" and "The Penguins of Madagascar" all came out around the same time? Or "Antz" and "A Bug's Life"? "Finding Nemo" and "A Shark's Tale"? Two years ago it was all Bigfoot and Yeti movies, like "Missing Link", "Smallfoot" and "Abominable"? Yeah, either these things go in stages, or Sony and Dreamworks have corporate spies who research what the other studios are up to, so they can be first to market.
I got a bad vibe from this film last year, when I was working at an AMC and I saw the teaser poster - I won't post it here because it was a close of Ron the robot wearing his little winter cap, and not knowing much about the movie, to me that looked very much like, well, a very pale part of the male anatomy, let's say - with a colored condom on top with a reservoir tip. Sorry to be crude here, but look up that poster online and tell me that's NOT what that looks like. They've since changed the poster, at least on IMDB, so I'm betting I wasn't the only one who saw that in the image. I guess that wasn't enough to keep people from bringing their kids out to see this film, it made a fair amount of money last year, $23 million in North America, that's more than "The Mitchells vs the Machines", which went straight to Netflix, so technically, no box office grosses.
The two films share a lot of DNA in common - both films start out with a tech company CEO telling an audience about the fantastic new innovative device that his company is releasing - and in both movies, that's a young-ish and black-ish cool guy named Mark (or Marc) with good intentions. But it's only "Ron's Gone Wrong" that has a second tech guru, behind the scenes, who looks a lot like a pudgy Steve Jobs. And then both movies show personal tech - cell phones or PDAs used for evil purposes, either to take over the world or to spy on kids, steal their personal information and sell them things, which is essentially the same thing if you think about it. And then of course both films have nerdy, awkward, unpopular kids or teens as their main characters, just in "Mitchells" it's a college-age teen girl interested in filmmaking, and in "Ron" it's a pre-teen (?) boy interested in, umm, rocks? The pitch is the same, both films set their targets on the kids who don't fit in, because at some point, that's every kid. Pretty sneaky...
What's weird here is that the film with the most outlandish plot - a cell phone OS commanding robots to imprison EVERY human and put them a rocket to outer space, somehow feels more connected to reality? That can't be right - but the plot of "Ron's Gone Wrong" takes off from a different place, where a new Personal Device shaped like a giant egg is somehow bought by EVERY middle-schooler everywhere, and I'm not really sure what the appeal of the device is, so that seems more unbelievable somehow? It's just like a Furby crossed with a Tamagotchi or something, and it plays music and videos and VR simulations for the kids? Yeah, but there's no Wordle or Candy Crush, so I don't see kids giving up their cell phones for these "B-Bots" anytime soon. It's too bad that screenplays are mostly written by adults who don't understand the kids - I'm not saying that I do, I don't understand kids at all. But some screenwriter had to GUESS what kids would want in a digital device, and I really doubt that THIS is it.
What's more, Barney gets picked on at school because he doesn't have one, his father runs a failing novelty item business, so he can't afford the hot toy for his son. But then Barney's weird grandmother buys him a broken B-Bot from somebody in an alley, and then Barney gets picked on because he HAS a B-Bot. Well, come on, this kid can't catch a break, he gets bullied for not having one, then he gets bullied for HAVING one? And once again, a movie aimed at kids demonstrates the absolute WORST advice for how to deal with a bully, only this time it's not "Fight back", it's "Have your robot fight back for you." Umm, no, Hollywood, this is not an acceptable answer. Pity your bully, have your bully arrested or expelled, bribe your bully or make friends with your bully, all of these are better tips than the ones you tend to land on, again and again.
The one redeeming part of this story is the depiction of social media as a double-edged sword - sure, kid, you're riding high with 27 million followers on the Insta - but then when you accidentally post something embarrassing during a live-stream, you've gone viral for the wrong reasons. Now you're "pee boy" or "vomit girl" or worse, and it's out there now, you can't take it down if it's spread to other people's feeds, now you have to disappear for a few years until everyone forgets about you. OR that hot new app is secretly recording your conversations so that companies can target you with ads - remember that scandal years ago when the Furbys started asking kids about their parents' household income? Or you had to tell Teddy Ruxpin your mother's maiden name before it would tell you a story? Now you see Facebook posts asking you to tell everyone your porn name, which is the street you grew up on, followed by your credit card expiration date, I don't know who falls for this but somebody does.
Anyway, the broken Ron-bot turns out to be just the exact weird sort of charming, clueless presence that Barney needs in his life - but by contrast, I can't quite figure out what the other kids are doing with the B-Bots that DO work correctly, because the movie doesn't really even GO there. Ron's the anomaly, he learns to become Barney's friend a very different way, and this is portrayed as somehow more "genuine", but is it, really? Again, no explanation given for how the malfunction somehow makes the bot work "better", because that would require showing us the other bots for contrast, and the film just can't be bothered to do so. What are the other 99.9% of kids doing with their bots? I bet it's something nasty...
We've been told for decades that robots would be designed with protocols in place, according to Asimov's rules that they should never be allowed to hurt humans, or allow humans to be hurt in any way. So, umm, what happened to this, who decided it was a bad idea to scrap this? All it took in "The Mitchells vs the Machines" was for a Siri-like program to just, I don't know, switch this off? It shouldn't have been possible, but if it weren't, then we wouldn't have a movie, I know. And here in "Ron's Gone Wrong", the malfunctioning Ron doesn't have his safety protocols installed because he's not able to connect to the "Bubble Network", but these safeties should be HARD-WIRED into any robot built, whether they're on-network or in roaming mode. RIGHT? Then when the bullies learn Ron has no safety protocols, they just have him bump into other B-Bots, and then THEY suddenly have no safety protocols? This is madness, part of having the safety protocols in place should be that they CAN'T be turned off, because then all roads lead to killer robots and then Skynet taking over.
And it's the interaction between Barney and Ron that somehow teaches a robot how to laugh - sorry, that's not possible either. This isn't "Star Trek", with Data just getting an emotion chip placed in his brain - the very definition of the robot brain belies the ability to HAVE emotions in the first place, because those are the things that make us human. Humans can make other humans, but they can't make robots that act like humans, the best they could ever do is program robots with human emotion-like reactions, and that just isn't the same thing. It could get CLOSE over time, but it will never, ever be robots with real emotions, God willing, just simulated ones.
Don't even get me started on Barney's immigrant Bulgarian grandmother, who carries a live chicken everywhere and doesn't understand anything. I'm not even Bulgarian, but found this depiction offensive on their behalf.
Also starring the voices of Jack Dylan Grazer (last seen in "It Chapter Two") Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Ed Helms (last seen in "Father Figures"), Rob Delaney (last seen in "The Hustle"), Justice Smith (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Kylie Cantrall, Ricardo Hurtado, Cullen James McCarthy, Ava Morse, Marcus Scribner (last heard in "The Good Dinosaur"), Thomas Barbusca, Ruby Wax (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Sarah Miller, Krupa Pattani, Megan Maczko (last seen in "A Hologram for the King"), David Menkin (ditto), Bentley Kalu (last seen in "Judy"), John Macmillan (last seen in "Hanna"), Iara Nemirovsky, Liam Payne.
RATING: 4 out of 10 unsent party invitations
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