A video game duo comes to the big screen, in this feature length animated film written and directed by Kevin Munroe. In “Ratchet & Clank”, we get the origin story of two unlikely heroes named Ratchet (James Arnold Taylor), a Lombax mechanic, and Clank (David Kaye), an escaped robot, as they struggle to stop a vile alien named Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti) from destroying every planet in the Solana Galaxy. When the two stumble upon a dangerous weapon capable of destroying entire planets, they must join forces with a team of colorful heroes called The Galactic Rangers in order to save the galaxy. This is a dream in the making for the ambitious Clank, as these heroes are his biggest of idols. Along the way, the duo learn about heroism, friendship, and the importance of discovering one’s own identity. Based on the best-selling Playstation video game of the same name, “Ratchet & Clank” is rated PG for action and some rude humor.
To the best of my knowledge after seeing “Ratchet & Clank”, I can only assume that this movie exists purely as a commercial for a video game counterpart that is not only deeper in character narrative, but intriguing in time invested into that property. What I mean by that is that the movie can be compared to golf. Not fun to watch on television, but to play it might turn your opinion around about it all together. With the exception of some excellent voice work by a top-notch A-list cast, this duo offers very little positives for an older audience looking to spend some bonding time with their children. Truthfully, I don’t think kids will get much out of this either. The film’s comedic material is definitely targeted to kids, with a lot of it being rooted in reaction humor and goofy voices. The funny thing is that my audience had twelve people in the theater with me, and yet it was near silence for a majority of the 90 minute run time. So what do you do when your material doesn’t even garner respect from the one audience it’s targeted at? You look for other reasons and film notables to get you through a boring sit.
There’s nothing truly offensive about the animation for the movie, but it does feel like watching a Nickelodeon Saturday morning cartoon. Considering the Playstation executives decided to pump 12 million dollars into this project, you would figure that they would update some looks and designs from the video games, but no. Everything here feels as lifeless and uninspiring as an outdated video game. We are living in a 2016 with Pixar, DreamWorks, and Laika doing so much positively for different streams of animation beauty, so why should we accept visuals that lack much physical trait depth or any intricacies in backgrounds for such a space opera? The mouth motions are pretty solid. There wasn’t any time during the movie where the lips of the characters didn’t match that of the wording coming out of their mouths, so that’s a positive. The coloring also really makes the near-sighted interiors pop visually, making space a colorful place despite being infinite nothingness. The animation movements were the very first thing I noticed about the movie, and its finished product reminded me of three different television cartoons cut together to form one product.
The material itself only confirmed these suspicions. For a film that barely clocks in at an hour-and-a-half, the movie doesn’t seem interested in character development or backstories to go along with their conflicts. The producers of this film really alienate those people who haven’t played the video games, as the beginning of the first act kind of feels like a continuance of a left off effort. Instead, character personalities are built in fast-forward through long-winded speech patterns that correspond to the vocal designs of the actors voicing them. For instance, if there is a visually imposing hero on-screen, he must come across vocally as a musclehead, despite the film not being interested in his histories. I mentioned earlier that the material confirmed this Saturday morning feel, and what I meant is that the three-act structure is virtually non-existent, considering there are three different first acts (One every thirty minutes), three different second acts, and three different triumphs during third acts. You can almost see the cut edit where the producers decided to paste everything together. Twenty minutes into the movie, and I was already checking my watch because there is nothing in “Ratchet & Clank” that I haven’t seen done better in “Star Wars” or “Titan A.E”. On the former, boy oh boy does this movie take some liberties visually with “A New Hope”.
The voice work was some of the only joys that I got out of this rough sit. What I find fun about this movie is to not read anything about it before going in, and instead let your ears be the celebrity navigator for who is in this movie. I know I’ve already spoiled Paul Giamatti, but trust me when I tell you that there are more surprises behind every corner. Credit to Kevin Munroe for offering a nice blend of familiar names to stand next to Taylor and Kaye, who have voiced the video game duo for three games. In most big-screen adaptations, the movie studios decide to go in a different direction, but here’s a franchise proud of its origins, and the work of these two shine masterfully because of it. In Kaye, we get a soft spoken English-accent to front the robot with all of the tools to save the day. In Taylor, we get the ambitious dreamer who brings out the childlike innocence when Ratchet’s dreams finally come true to be on this team. I would like to get into some of the other celebrity voice work as well, but I’m going to keep this spoiler free and not take that little enjoyment out of it for you guys.
“Ratchet & Clank” offers an acceptable enough continue button for fans of the game, but alienates its new audience with cheap visuals and non-existent character development. There’s nothing deeper beneath the surface here, and because of that, this movie fails to compete with the evolving landscape of respectable kids movies.
3/10