ANI-MOVIES, *Ron's Gone Wrong

As the next 20th Century Animation theatrical release since The Book Of Life, former Aardman animator Sarah Smith directed this first Fox cartoon movie after being bought out by Disney. Ron's Gone Wrong takes the premise of "a boy and his blank" but for the current generation addicted to social media. The film stars Jack Dylan Grazer as the boy in this story who also performed in Pixar's Luca that came out in the same year, along with Zach Galifianakis as the titular robot who is trying but failing to do his best impression of Baymax from Big Hero 6. It's an original story not based on any existing material, but a commentary on how people rely on the internet to make friends instead of in real life.

The huge Bubble corporation releases their latest product, a 2-ft. robotic capsule branded as a B-Bot. Everyone in the neighboring small mountain town of Nonsuch goes crazy for one as all the kids in school get their own. The only one left out is Barney who is usually an outcast as his previous friends were scared off years before at his birthday by his former-Russian grandmother and his clueless father who has the sad career of selling novelty toys online. For his current birthday, Barney gets a broken B-Bot his father got that literally fell off a delivery truck. The malfunctioning robot has a faulty startup, thus getting everything that he learns about Barney mixed up. The entire opening relationship between boy and bot becomes a running but endearing Who's On First routine, even though Barney grows to like his companion's quirky programming. The glitchy robot causes a scene with some bullies that gets him taken back to the Bubble store where he is sentenced to be crushed. Barney saves him and calls him Ron, keeping it a secret from his family, even though Ron follows him to school the next day and entices a riot unlocking all the other B-bot's safety protocols. Barney doesn't want to lose Ron, so he runs away from home with him into the woods. The duo has some real fun on their own, but Ron realizes that Barney can't survive away from civilization, especially with asthma, so he brings him back home. Luckily, Ron is saved from being destroyed by the B-bot's creator Marc, even though Ron's real algorithm is locked in Bubble's cloud network which Marc doesn't have access to as his corrupt partner Andrew has outed him as CEO. Along with his family and newfound friends, Barney leads a heist on the Bubble headquarters to find Ron's lost marbles. The ending is something similar to the finale of The Iron Giant, even though the world is left a little better because of Ron's actions.

Ron's Gon Wrong is features Dreamwork's level of animation and character designs, not exactly up to modern Disney CGI theatrical movies standards or anything Pixar is puting out. The story is welcome to all ages with nothing really to shame kids with, while at the same time not having to rely on fart jokes or outdated references to pop culture junkies. I'd recommend this feature to any audience as a healthy reminder of knowing people IRL is more important that getting likes online.