Ron’s Gone Wrong movie review: A sweet, harmless yet generic ode to friendship in the social media age

Language: English

What if your phone came to life?, asks Hollywood’s latest animated comedy Ron’s Gone Wrong. Here, the world is run by a Facebook-like personal data harvesting tech behemoth called Bubble (founded by someone who is also curiously called Mark). Bubble’s latest invention aimed at using algorithms to get adolescents addicted is the B Bot, a cute, droid-like robot companion that is essentially designed to become your phone, friends, and pet all rolled into one.

Like a walking, talking Instagram algorithm, the B Bot downloads everything there is to know about you, and uses that to become your new best friend. So naturally, the film aims to be a lighthearted, _ Black-Mirror -_for-kids satire on our rocky relationship with technology at the expense of genuine human interaction. Our hero is Barney, an awkward, lonely middle-schooler who has no friends. Barney is also the only person at his school who does not have a B Bot so of course, he feels left out and craves his very own digital BFF. Luckily, on his birthday, his dad comes through, and manages to get a slightly damaged one at a cheaper price. Enter Ron. An adorable anomaly that is quite literally cracked, Ron is a defective piece that is not like the others. He is not connected to the Bubble network which thrives on algorithms and personal data to keep kids glued, and hence is able to forge a ‘true friendship’ with Barney. Delightfully disruptive, and wonderfully weird, Ron (voiced by Zack Galifianakis), is by far the best thing about the movie.

Directors Sarah Smith and Jean-Philippe Vine’s sweet saga, about what true friendship means in the age of social media, is a harmless, playful adventure with its head and heart in the right place. But it is also far too generic and familiar to be particularly remarkable.

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The film hardly breaks new ground, and is let down by the fact that we have seen this story and these ideas numerous times before, and done better in other animated films.

[caption id=“attachment_10092081” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A still from Ron’s Gone Wrong | Pixar[/caption] Ron’s Gone Wrong does not have the exhilarating action, spectacle, or scale of Big Hero 6 (similarly about a boy’s touching connection with his robot) or the specificity and zany hilarity of The Mitchells Vs The Machines (one of the best films of this year) or the beating heart of Pixar’s Wall-E. Even the core idea of a lonely misfit unable to connect with those around him who finds an unlikely friend was explored with far more depth in the deeply affecting How To Train Your Dragon . There is much room for cutesy comedy and commentary in the premise but Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith’s writing does not reach for specificity, and fails to rise above strictly functional. Even its observations of the impact of social media on self-worth and insecurity, or creating what a world where social media has legs could look like, are strictly surface-level. Ron’s Gone Wrong works best when it focuses on the small and intimate, in the early portions of the proceedings where we see Barney’s budding friendship with Ron. But it gets away from itself later on when it sets its sights on the big, and becomes about literally saving the world from a big evil corporation. And despite these well-intentioned ambitions, it certainly does not earn its almost two-hour runtime. _Ron’s Gone Wron_g also has an odd messaging problem. While it agrees that social media, phones, and generally living the screen life are a bad thing, its definition of what good looks like is confusing. It seems to suggest that the solution is not about not being addicted to tech, but to form meaningful connections with it. Or something. The movie frames Ron as the solution to the B Bot addiction problem because he is capable of human connection, has choice, and likes to play outdoors, apparently. The utopian ending here is not that people shouldn’t be addicted to B Bots, but that everyone’s B Bots should become like Ron. So the solution to our disturbing dependence on social media is to be reliant on… slightly different social media. There are some genuinely hilarious and heartfelt scenes such as when Ron realises he cannot do what he is meant to for Barney — send friend requests, post life updates, share food posts, and encourage people to comment on his pictures. So he decides to do all these things manually, by literally going up to strangers and asking them to be Barney’s friends, giving them updates on Barney’s life, and even showing them Barney’s pictures and asking them to comment. I just wish there were more like these. Ron’s Gone Wrong is an enjoyable day at the movies, especially for those of us who have missed the big screen as desperately as I have. But it certainly doesn’t live up to Ron’s claim of being ‘your best friend out of the box.’ It is more like that fun person you met that one time, whose company you enjoyed, but who, chances are, you will hardly remember a year from now.

 Ron’s Gone Wrong is available in cinemas.

Rating: ***

Suchin Mehrotra is a film journalist and movie junkie who sincerely believes movies can change the world. You can find him on Twitter at @suchin545.