Ratchet & Clank
Directed by: Kevin Munroe & Jericca Cleland
Written by: T.J. Fixman and Kevin Munroe and Gerry Swallow
Voices by: Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson, Jim Ward, James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Armin Shimerman, Sylvester Stallone
Animation/Action/Adventure - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 27 Apr 2016
Written by: T.J. Fixman and Kevin Munroe and Gerry Swallow
Voices by: Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson, Jim Ward, James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Armin Shimerman, Sylvester Stallone
Animation/Action/Adventure - 94 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 27 Apr 2016
Beware the film based on a video game. Remember Super Mario Bros and to a lesser extent Street Fighter and Doom? I was in the correct age demographic in the early ‘90s for Mario and even I recognized how awful it was. Ratchet & Clank, brought to you by PlayStation Studios, is based on a 2002 video game whose franchise continues to this day. In fact, none of you will be surprised there is a new Ratchet & Clank video game on shelves now for the PlayStation 4 right. There are worse examples of video game/movie crossovers but this blatant attempt to gin up game sales with a movie would be tiresome even if the script wasn’t mind-numbing and the characters weren’t grating.
I have never played a Ratchet & Clank game before but you can tell from the credit list which characters are from the game and which are new. Any celebrity you identify including Paul Giamatti, Rosario Dawson, John Goodman, and Sylvester Stallone voice new characters dreamed up to bring life and a new narrative to the Ratchet universe. All the voiceover artists you do not recognize are playing characters brought over from the game franchise. There appear to be more than a few Ratchet & Clank games out there but the movie is an origin story showing us how the two became a duo and what sort of adventures they are likely to tackle.
I have never played a Ratchet & Clank game before but you can tell from the credit list which characters are from the game and which are new. Any celebrity you identify including Paul Giamatti, Rosario Dawson, John Goodman, and Sylvester Stallone voice new characters dreamed up to bring life and a new narrative to the Ratchet universe. All the voiceover artists you do not recognize are playing characters brought over from the game franchise. There appear to be more than a few Ratchet & Clank games out there but the movie is an origin story showing us how the two became a duo and what sort of adventures they are likely to tackle.
The studio has their fingers crossed for at least a trilogy and leaves no doubt they are ready to continue should the box office confirm enough interest in the first one. Super Mario Bros. is infamous for setting itself up for a sequel that never happened because of how wretched the first one was. Ratchet & Clank is not as dreadful as Super Mario Bros. but this reviewer’s fingers are crossed the box office does not cross some particular goalpost signifying a sequel green light. First of all, I learned the Ratchet & Clank universe is more interested in weaponry and firearm kinetic effects than character and story.
There are extended scenes where laser weapon after disfiguring laser weapon are detailed in their ferocity and whether or not they are short-range, long-range, automatic, single, or multi-fire weapons. Tedium is inevitable after the film takes time to inventory what must be recognizable to the video game fans. Perhaps the most interesting firearm is the sheepinator; I’ll let you guess what that device does to humans. There are no connections to real creatures here; Ratchet is all about alien beings, some robotic, some horned, and all those in between.
Ratchet (James Arnold Taylor) is a lombax living on a backwater desert planet as a repairman. A lombax looks part cat, fox, and perhaps dingo? Similar to his cinematic cousin Luke Skywalker, Ratchet is an orphan who has big dreams to one day leave the small town and become a hero. Fate crash-lands nearby in the form of Clank (David Kaye), a defect from a robot army the evil Drek (Giamatti, Straight Outta Compton) is commissioning to defeat the Galactic Rangers, a small team of heroes commissioned to defend the galaxy from super villains.
Director Kevin Munroe made a smart decision to stay with the original voice actors from the video games. First, don’t fix what isn’t broke and Ratchet, Clank, and rest of the gang all sound well enough and second, don’t piss off the original fan base who will comprise most of the film’s attendees in week one. Munroe says he played the game all those years ago and cutting his teeth in the video game industry himself, was a natural to helm the project. He assures the audience we don’t need to know anything about the source material to have a good time but I suspect knowing a bit about how weapons-focused the script would be wouldn’t hurt.
Ratchet & Clank is a family film with a sci-fi spin about a rural kid looking to the stars for adventure. This is nothing new; we have seen orphans in backwater locales itching for greater things probably since cavemen started telling stories about a kid from a faraway cave who wanted to become chief caveman. This set up worked in Star Wars and even worked in The Last Straighter, another movie that did not live to see a sequel. I have a feeling the Ratchet universe is far larger than what we see here because there are multiple planets and solar systems squeezed into these mere 90 minutes. I have no doubt given the chance, Mr. Munroe would love to fill in Ratchet’s background and lineage, but really, I’d rather see someone attempt a Legend of Zelda movie instead.
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