By Sandra Hall
RON’S GONE WRONG ★★★
PG, 107 minutes
Ron is a “bot”, created to be the kind of friend every school kid dreams about – playmate, confidante, keeper of secrets and expert adviser on all aspects of social media.
Barney (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer) and B*bot Ron (voiced by Zack Galifianakis).
At least that’s what he should be. In reality, he’s not quite up to speed. He’s fallen off the back of a truck – in the literal sense - and Barney, the lonely schoolboy who receives him as a birthday present, quickly learns he won’t do as he’s told.
At first, Barney wants him taken back to the factory. But after a while, he begins to believe Ron knows best.
Ron’s Gone Wrong is the first CGI feature to come from the British animation company Locksmith, which was formed in 2014 with the financial backing of Elisabeth Murdoch, billed as one of the film’s executive producers, and it delights in poking gentle fun at big tech.
The founder of Bubble, the manufacturers of Ron and his fellow “B*bots”, bears a strong physical resemblance to Apple’s boss, Tim Cook, and Bubble’s chief executive is called Mark. The hold that social media has on sub-teens also comes in for a skewering.
When the film opens, Barney (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the only kid in the school who doesn’t have a B*bot. Since the death of his mother, he has been brought up by his harassed father (Ed Helms) and his Bulgarian grandmother (Olivia Colman), and the household budget hasn’t been able to handle the cost of a bot until Barney’s dad comes across Ron (Zach Galifianakis).
Overlooking the fact he hasn’t been fully programmed with Bubble software, he brings him home, leaving Barney to cope with his idiosyncrasies and their trouble-making potential.
Ron’s saving graces are his unquenchable curiosity and his desire to protect Barney, whatever the risk, although these qualities, too, have their disadvantages since he doesn’t know the meaning of moderation. As a result, Barney soon finds himself having to apologise to the school bully.
The animation isn’t particularly distinctive. Ron looks a lot like R2D2, but the schoolyard chaos he provokes has plenty of energy and wit. The scenes inside Bubble HQ have a strong air of futuristic spookiness, especially when management decides Ron must be re-claimed and taken apart in an effort to analyse the causes of his individuality.
Adults should enjoy the satirical aspects of all this, but children, too, will benefit from the film’s irreverent attitude to big tech and its overlords. If regulation and legislation aren’t going to work in curbing their powers, maybe there’s an urgent need for the cleansing effect of hearty laughter.
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