Item: Ron’s Gone Wrong
Rating: 7
Author: Matt Rooney

PLOT: A boy and his malfunctioning robot form a friendship and try to outsmart a tech company trying to track them down.

REVIEW: Fit for a perfect double feature alongside this year’s The Mitchell’s vs. The Machines, 20th Century Studios’ Ron’s Gone Wrong is yet another animated movie that’s providing young viewers colorful entertainment that’s also hinting to them the device they’re likely watching it on is not their friend. Sure, it’s primarily a story about a boy (Jack Dylan Grazer) and his Tic-Tac-shaped robot pal, Ron (Zach Galifianakis), but their very sweet, very familiar adventure approaches timely themes of technology, social media, and consumerism that are as important for the parents to hear as it is children growing up with the world in their pockets.

Things start simple enough, beginning as many of these movies often do by introducing us to Barney (Grazer), a lonely boy who has no human friends, nor a robotic one like all his classmates do — the B-Bot. Like if Apple invented their version of a Cabbage Patch Doll that also harvested data and recorded all your moves, the B-Bot works like a big cell phone in the form of a communicative robot and is meant to absorb all the info you put online in the hopes of connecting you with new friends who like the same things. However, like phones of today, the reality is it simply makes a lot of kids more alienated, shallow, or obnoxious than anything else. Oh, and it can be, like, a rocket skateboard, too.

But once Barney’s dreams come true and his father (Ed Helms) gets him his own B-Bot (which he bought damaged off the back of a truck), he realizes he is not the advanced piece of A.I. all the other kids have. Possessing none of the source code the other Bots do, Ron is, essentially, a giant, glitchy weirdo. He can do pretty much nothing other Bots can even get Barney’s name right. Instead of absorbing Barney’s online profile, he’s often trying to calculate how many Newtons of force are required to rip something’s head off.

While the familiar setup makes you feel like you can tell where the story is going, with Barney learning at the end that it’s Ron’s weirdness that makes him special, the great move by writers Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith (who co-directs with Jean-Philippe Vine) is in how they get that out of the way early. After a wild afternoon together in which Ron hilariously smacks around Barney’s bullies, Barney realizes Ron is quite special and goes on to help Ron learn how to earn the “Best Friend Out of the Box” sticker that came on his packaging. As a result, the movie isn’t just about learning to love someone (thing) for who (what) they are, but rather what it means to really be friends and how that’s infinitely more special than anything you can experience online.

As their adventures continue, Barney gives Ron insight into his likes, dislikes, and insecurities — like how it’s best for Ron to just give him some space when he’s having a bad day. As for Ron, he’s treated not like some goofy glitch who’s just good for some sight gags, but as a being that’s simply free-spirited and individualistic. Throughout the course of the movie, they have moments of fun and expectedly wild misunderstandings, but also a few struggles, giving insight into how friends can have arguments that don’t simply kick off the third act, but rather are moments the two can learn from.

After his work in Disney’s Luca earlier this year, Grazer turns in more fine vocal work as the sweet, nervous Barney, bringing the natural likability to this role as he does his on-screen work. Galifianakis is perfectly cast as Ron, who you can imagine steals the show with pretty much every funny bit once he hits the screen. He possesses such a precise kind of weirdness for Ron that feels just right for a robot but is jubilant enough to be endearing and give Ron humanity. Helms, Kylie Cantrall as popular classmate Savannah and more also do some good work, and stealing scenes in the early part of the movie is Olivia Colman as Barney’s Russian grandmother. Colman was also in Mitchells vs. The Machines, which means two times this year she did scene-stealing work in animated movies about the folly of reliance on technology — so go her.

On the villain side of things, Rob Delaney voices Andrew Morris, who has no qualms with admitting he’s using the B-Bots to spy on pretty much everyone for whatever purpose he wants, like hunting down Ron so as to avoid a stock market collapse. Just as Morris is un-subtle about using the tech for his own bidding, the movie is un-subtle about who he’s referencing, looking Apple CEO Tim Cook-esque and is pretty much a representation of anyone who has started any sort of social media/tech company.

But as thoughtful as an approach to the core of the storytelling the filmmakers took, the rest of the movie on the surface feels pretty by the numbers, execution-wise. Nothing outside of Ron or Granny is particularly funny, and it’s another animated movie that owes a bit too much to E.T., with a large force coming to take Ron away from Barney, sending the two of them on the run. As well, it feels like it has two endings, one of them finding Ron saving Barney from near death, and the other being a sequence of a rag-tag group infiltrating a giant corporate headquarters, which at this point feels obligatory for many animated movies.

And while the story eventually hits on just how devastating technology like this can be on the mental well-being and social dynamics of young people, the movie doesn’t go to as emotionally resonant places as it could’ve. Savannah, for instance, feels her life is ruined when an embarrassing video of her goes viral, the reactions to which she can’t stop looking at with tears streaming down her face. The visuals of these scenes can be powerful, but with them laced in between the action of Ron and Barney going about their adventures, feels like a wasted opportunity to explore deeper and get into territory perhaps some other young people have gone through.

The same can be said for Rich Belcher (Ricardo Hurtado), a bully who wants his prank videos to go viral, but is dismayed when no one watches, as well for one student who can make any friends online, and one who is so caught up in getting top gaming scores he’s essentially blind to everything else. The final moments touch on their struggles in ways that are just able to sell the movie’s overall point, but not enough to make it really hit home emotionally. You can tell the filmmakers really want anyone watching to get their point that these gadgets can be much more a hindrance than a gift, and while that’s certainly worthwhile, it does feel like it misses that chance to really deep dive into the young characters to make it all strike home.

Technology is here to stay, and you’re never going to get young ones away from their gadgets. The filmmakers understand this and say with their ending that while our gadgets may have the ability to make life a bit more enjoyable, they are vastly less important than the relationships we make in the real world. The friendship of Barney and Ron is sweet and complex, and often a ton of fun to watch thanks to some strong voice acting and gags. To add to it all is some too simple messaging that deserves to be paid attention to, perhaps so that maybe young people realize internet life is not the most important life. If parents can’t get that message across on their own, why not use a cute talking robot to help out?