Ron’s Gone Wrong
A genuinely funny and lovely kids film that occasionally tackles the social media behemoths with sledgehammer subtlety.
Giant tech behemoth Bubble releases the B-Bot; a ‘Best Friend Out Of The Box’ robotic toy solution to childhood friendship, that seems like Instagram, TikTok, a computer, a bestie, and a speed-dating friendship selection tool all in one. Alas, young Barney (Jack Dylan Grazer) is the only kid in his class to not have one. His widowed father Graham (Ed Helms) and very Romanian grandmother Donka (Olivia Colman) stretch the limits of their budget to get him one for his birthday, but they can only afford one that fell off the truck. Its name is Ron (Zach Galifianakis), and Barney’s initial excitement soon gives way to horror as he realises that Ron is a bit wrong; he only downloaded 5% of his programming. He can’t do anything the other B-Bots can, and only knows the A words in the dictionary. Ron sets about learning how to be a good friend to Barney, and after some initial hesitation, Barney begins to teach him how to be a good friend. In the end though, Barney might just discover that Ron teaches him a thing or two about what friendship really is.
Ron’s Gone Wrong is a beautifully animated children’s movie that looks gorgeous from front to back. It uses the pantheon of Disney films to bring relatable content into the piece, yet never loses its unique look and feel.
One of the most impressive things about the film is how goddamn funny it is. Barney’s Romanian family life is a frequent winner, and so too is Rons’ fish-out-of-water aesthetic. In fact, the funniest sequence in the film occurs when Ron, hell bent on finding Barney friends, heads out to the local town centre and physically typifies all that online terminology we take for granted; asking people if they want to be Barney’s friend, showing them a photo of him and requesting a comment or a like.
The significant bouts of laughter also give way in the end to a tender and heartfelt ending. Despite the fact we’ve all heard the message before, you may nevertheless find yourself tearing up by the end.
The film does have issues, however, and in particular those stem from its tackling of the social media giants. Our modern reality sees myriad problems with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok impacting our children, and indeed we see it playing out recently in the US Congress’s inquest, as well as in Zuckerberg’s rumoured thinking around changing the name of his company to something less toxic-associated. The problem with Ron’s Gone Wrong is that it tackles this too head on, and without a hint of subtlety. Bubble’s CEO is even named Marc (Justice Smith). Gone is the sly, wink and you’ll miss it references of a film like Wall-E; here, the writing is on the wall, and there’s a billion flashing signs pointing at it and telling you to look. For adult consumers, this brings a series of cringe-worthy moments that are at odds with what would be a knowing understanding in a better film. For kids, it still seems too difficult a concept to really grasp. Couple that with one ending too many, and you have a film that is very funny, and very fun, but ultimately unlikely to become a classic or staple in years to come.
