Ron's Gone Wrong

Ron's Gone Wrong is a charming and heartfelt children's fantasy that both celebrates technology, while also exploring the negative side effects.  This is represented by two of its key characters who work for the fictional tech corporation, Bubble, within the film.  It's CEO Marc Weidell (voice by Justice Smith) has created his latest tech device in order to help kids make friends and expand their world.  Meanwhile, its COO Andrew Morris (Rob Delaney) wants to use this same technology to spy on its customers for profit.  And while their conflict may create much of the message behind the film, its heart belongs to a young boy and the friendship that he builds with a defective piece of tech.

Said boy is Barney Pudowski (Jack Dylan Grazer), a lonely preteen with no friends, a widower father (Ed Helms) who is usually too busy keeping his struggling novelty business afloat to pay him much mind, and a Bulgarian grandmother (an unrecognizable Olivia Colman) who is very much set in the ways of her old country.  The latest technology to come out of Bubble, the B-Bot, is the new must-have gadget that literally every kid at Barney's school owns, except for him.  It's an egg-shaped robot that personalizes itself to your likes and interests, connects itself and you to others, and has helped expand communication.  Barney's dad wants to surprise his son with one for his birthday, but they're naturally out of his price range.  Luckily, he finds a good deal from a delivery driver who sells one that fell off his truck during shipping for a discount.  Dad brings the defective B-Bot home, and that is how Barney meets Ron (Zach Galifianakis), a smiling little B-Bot with a blank expression, kind of looks and talks like a distant relative of Baymax from Big Hero 6, and has more than a few defaults to his programming.

Ron is supposed to be able to download information, find out everything about Barney, and be his best friend right out of the box.  But because of his defective nature, he can do none of those things.  He doesn't even have the required safety protocols that prevent him from harming others.  And yet, as Barney spends time with the little B-Bot, a bond does begin to form.  There is a charm to Ron's sunny yet off personality, and Galifianakis does some fantastic line readings that get genuine laughs.  Through Barney, Ron learns what it means to be a friend, and even the kid learns some lessons in the process.  Along the way, there are some stops as the film looks at our social media-obsessed culture, the effects of on line bullying and harassment, and the roles that tech plays in our daily lives.  Sure, all of these issues have been explored in numerous films, but this movie manages to find a heartfelt and at times hilarious angle to make them engaging.

Ron's Gone Wrong has been provided with a smart script, a talented cast, and a strong visual design from Locksmith Animation Studio, a newcomer in the feature film animation field.  It's kind of hard not to fall for Ron the B-Bot, especially when he's going around rounding up strangers off the street who he thinks will make good friends for his human owner.  The movie also does a good job exploring the effects of online humiliation, when an embarrassing incident involving a popular girl at Barney's school (Kylie Cantrall) goes viral, and nearly winds up destroying her emotionally.  Kids will definitely be able to relate to a lot of the film's messages, and adults will enjoy its wit, fast pacing, and genuine heart behind it all.  The stuff involving the corporate situation going on behind the scenes at Bubble, and how the two minds behind the company react differently to the situation of one of their B-Bots going rogue is a bit less reliable, but it manages to hold together and speak to all age groups, which family films are supposed to do in the first place.

When it comes to animated features satirizing technology and its impact on society, this will have to be second to The Mitchells vs. the Machines (still my favorite animated feature of 2021), but at the very least, this is miles above The Addams Family 2, which is its only competition in the family market right now.  Just like Ron the B-Bot, the movie is a scrappy little underdog that you feel like rooting for.

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