Ratchet And Clank (6 out of Ten, Director: Kevin Munroe Runtime: 94 minutes Rating: PG Cast: James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Jim Ward, Paul Giamatti, Armin Shimerman, Sylvester Stallone, Rosario Dawson, Bella Thorne) In wide release April 29th.
Films based on video games range from the meh-standard fare (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat) to the absolute worst (Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros). For every passable popcorn flick, there are two dozen clunkers filled with head-scratching plots, bad acting, and even worse dialogue. Making movies out of video games hasn’t racked up a lot of high scores for Hollywood.
Rainmaker Entertainment’s ‘Ratchet & Clank’ isn’t a bad movie at all; it just lacks that intangible “it” factor found in the most successful animated films. It’s the sort of second-tier animated action-comedy that can tide over audiences during the gaps between more heavily hyped big-ticket items…And, that’s a shame.
The game mostly follows the same plot and action of the recently rebooted/reimaged entry for the PlayStation 4. The story of Ratchet (voiced by James Arnold Taylor, who has voiced the character in games since 2003) is familiar. He’s a young mechanic who’s good at his job who dreams of bigger and better things. Specifically, he longs to be one of the Galactic Rangers, a small group of heroes led by his idol, Captain Qwark (Jim Ward)
As tends to happen in this kind of movie, Ratchet has greatness thrust upon him when Clank (David Kaye, the original voice of Clank since 2002), a small “defective” robot soldier, crash lands on Ratchet’s planet warning of an impending attack on a populated city.
The generic plot and characters — including the planet-wrecking corporate thug Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti) and the evil genius Doctor Nefarious (Armin Shimerman) — work in a video-game context, where familiarity gives the player an instant sense of comfort. As you would expect, life lessons are learned, jokes don’t quite zing as they should and the credits roll over a happy ending.
Much of the humor on display is true to the source material funny, delivered with aplomb by a voice cast that keeps a by-the-numbers outing from flopping outright; the animation is strong, vivid and sharp; and the film moves at a brisk, laudable pace. However, the glaring issues almost derail any quality that’s on display.
Unfortunately, the movie forgot one vital point to the plot: being fun. ‘Ratchet & Clank’ has good messages, touching moments, cute characters and enough laughs to forgive the fact that most of us have seen this movie before. Again, there is nothing all that terrible about this film but you might be overwhelmed by its averageness.
Interestingly, the newest video game in the ‘Ratchet & Clank’ series a video game based on the movie that’s based on the video game. Yes, seriously) is an explosive romp through impressive environments that encourages you to play it multiple times, even though a single play-through will take you much longer than the running time of the feature film. It features many of the same scenes that the movie alongside additional characters and dialogue that do a better job of fleshing out the world than the movie does in its hour and a half.
Even still, ‘Ratchet & Clank’ is successful at its main purpose of distracting the elementary-age set and probably won’t make parents want to claw their eyes out, so that counts as a win in the ‘family-movie genre’. It’s just too bad, the iconic Playstation O.G.’s deserved better. ‘Ratchet & Clank’ feels like a missed opportunity.
-Dagobot
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