Ratchet And Clank

Ratchet and Clank is a movie that feels like a direct-to-streaming film – and even then, it feels like a movie that maybe should have been given out free to people who bought the game based on the film. I am not sure how or why this film was given a theatrical release.

I played a few of the Ratchet and Clank games, they are fantastic games and have some decent stories in them. But, the stories in the games are accompaniment to the gameplay itself. With the movie, the story has to be excellent and also engaging as there is no gameplay to fill in the time between animated bits. The story in Ratchet and Clank is dismal by all accounts. It follows Ratchet who dreams to be a Galactic Ranger. He meets up with Clank who is a reject off a conveyer line of warrior robots. Together they fight a straw-man villain who flies around in a Death Star-like space station. That’s it.

The film does try to inject humor in it – like with the subtitles for different locations – but it feels like it is trying to hard. There are some moments in the film that got a chuckle from me, but there aren’t many of those. The characters are flimsy and the action not every exciting. The animation in the film is subpar, less Pixar and more cable TV animated show.

There are some big name stars voicing characters in the film, including: Paul Giamatti, Sylvester Stallone, John Goodman and Rosario Dawson. But, sadly they aren’t given characters to work with. Rosario Dawson’s Galactic Ranger felt like a bolted-on afterthought for the film.

Am I being harsh on the film? Maybe a bit. Had this been a direct-to-streaming release, it would have been understandable that it would not be on the same level as a Disney or Pixar release. But, this film was released to theaters and compared to some of the animated films in recent memory, this film fails miserably.