Ron's Gone Wrong 2021
This movie feels like it was made because it centers on current topics like materialism and social media, but it fails in actually dealing with those issues in any meaningful way. The setup is that all the kids have these dog-size robots that make great toys, but also are tied into social media and likes and dislikes. One kid doesn’t have any friends and is the last at his school to get one. His father finally gets him one, but it doesn’t work right and somehow the broken one is better because it isn’t programmed by a big company, but sort of by the kid? They are maybe taking a swipe at materialism, except they aren’t because he gets one too, and so are actually reinforcing it. Then they are kind of taking a swipe at social media and using social media commercially, except really they just show that there is a downside to social media and technology, but they still mostly accept it. I feel like what little plot the movie has also gets muddled and presented poorly. I was a little sleepy during the movie, which may have been because of the movie, or may have made me like the movie less. At any rate, this movie didn’t work for me. The kid never does much except try to protect his weird broken robot, when there should have been more of a human connection that this kid needs to make. Some of the malfunctioning robot stuff is fun, so it isn’t an unpleasant movie, just not a good one.
Written: 26 Oct 2021