In the days when I went to see at the least a movie a week, I almost certainly would have seen Ron’s Gone Wrong on its opening weekend. And it probably would have been a bit crowded since it’s a kids movie and those are always crowded. But in the days of the pandemic, I tend to be a bit more selective of what I go to see and when. So, something like this movie would been a bit less of a priority.
But now it’s out on HBO Max and Disney+ at the same time for some reason. It’s probably some weird quirk in the rights left over after Disney bought out Fox Studios. Regardless, I can see the movie in the comfort of my own home.
Young Barney Pudowski (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the one kid in Nonsuch Middle School who doesn’t have a B-Bot, a new robot friend and companion that is personalized to every child that has one. His widowed father (Ed Helms) isn’t exactly doing well with a novelty knickknack distributor, and Barney’s grandmother (Olivia Colman) is an eccentric old lady from some Eastern European country. Seeing how Barney is rather dejected after his gift of a rock hammer for his birthday, Barney’s father and grandmother go out to get him a B-bot, but the only one they can get is one the pair don’t know is damaged after falling off the back of a truck. As a result, the bot, eventually given the name “Ron” (Zach Galifianakis) can’t connect to the network for updates, the algorithm was never installed, and he is, well, wrong. And while Barney was initially inclined to take Ron back to the store and exchange him for a working one, he soon finds Ron rather endearing. Ron may not be able to do what the other B-bots are programmed to do, but he can learn how to be a friend from Barney.
Naturally, this has an interesting reaction within the Bubble Corporation. CEO Marc (Justice Smith), the man who invented the B-bot, is impressed by the way Barney actually taught Ron how to be a friend in ways that Marc’s programming couldn’t. However, he faces opposition within his company from the more bottom-line inclined COO Andrew (Rob Delaney). It seems there are some things within the B-bot that, should they come to light, might be problematic, but were something Andrew at least fully intended to be there.
It occurred to me, as I watched the movie, that any social commentary it had on the subject of kids and their connections to screens–the B-bot is basically social media and the smartphone merged with R2-D2–was accomplished much better in The Mitchells vs the Machines. That movie, also animated, similarly showed how addiction to technology could be a bad thing while also featuring an advanced AI of some sort that doesn’t take rejection very well. The difference here is that Mitchells was far more creative in its approach to the concept and was often just plain funnier. I’m not sure there was much all that original about Ron’s Gone Wrong, particularly since the best humor tended to involve the grandmother’s goat.
So, really, this was a fairly rote movie where the message was kids should just be friends and not be so absorbed in their screens and devices. That’s not all that revolutionary, and while the movie isn’t all that bad, I’d say just go to The Mitchells vs the Machines from earlier this year. It was just a much better movie trying to say the same basic thing.
Though, oddly enough, Olivia Colman voiced characters in both movies.
Grade: C
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