Random Movie Review - Ron's Gone Wrong

 

Starting off the year, let's look at an animated film not made by a major studio (even though Disney distributed it under 20th Century Studios). Now here in the UK, most of the world knows of Aardman in the ways of animation and not many other animation studios besides them. Locksmith are relatively new in the world of full CGI animation and market themselves as the "only high-end CGI animation movie studio in the UK making family friendly films". From seeing how many animated films made by lesser known studios have failed, with very little succeeding both critically and commercially, I wasn't too sure what to make of this film. A film that can be compared favourably to The Michells VS The Machines in terms of the whole technology thing, but nevertheless forges its own path. This is either going to be that one film Paramount regret ever having an interest in before 20th Century Studios took over, or a film that the former are probably glad to have had no part in (even though we all know they are still trying to get past the Michael Bay era). Let's take a look:

Set in the not too distant future (hopefully where Covid is no longer a major issue), a tech giant known as Bubble release their newest product onto the world, known as B-Bot. Created by company CEO Marc Weidell (voiced by Justice Smith), he wants people to use the bot to find friends using the algorithm he coded inside them. In a fictional town called Nonsuch (how original), middle schooler Barney (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer) becomes the only person not to have a B-Bot and loses his friends to them as a result. His father and grandmother (voiced respectively by Ed Helms and Olivia Colman) come to realize that he hasn't got any friends and make a desperate attempt to buy him a B-Bot, which they succeed in when a delivery driver gives them a slightly damaged one. Despite glitches and such, Barney is left happy and enjoys how his bot is different from everyone else (well eventually). But friendship may be put to the test when Bubble catches wind of his "different" B-Bot and want to be rid of it.

As the first film of a new CGI film studio based in the UK, this film is alright. Sure, the whole premise and idea is not wholly original, but with a good balance between heart and humour and decent animation for a first film from this studio, this film is far from going wrong. It probably does more right than wrong compared to similar films (well except for The Mitchells VS The Machines which itself is quite a superior animated film) and families and general movie goers will get a kick out of it for sure. Does kind of put a perspective in the future of technology in a way, assuming there are no gimmicks involved. 9/10