3 out of 5

Directed by: Kevin Munroe, Jericca Cleland

Well, that happened.  I’m still sort of puzzled as to why it happened – why a good selling franchise but not one with Angry Birds marketability, and one which doesn’t carry the kind of opening-day expectations as a Call of Duty or whatever, why this would be Playstation’s first movie outing – but overall, I am glad it happened, if anything because it puts to rest the compliment that the R&C games are like playing a Pixar movie; we’ve had the movie now, and the games are a much better experience.

But maybe we can understand the reason for R&C the movie: testing the waters.  The assets could be ready made with the videogame, the cast and style are all in place; perhaps it’s a small investment to get it on to some movie screens and see if people are watching.  And if enough are – just enough to make it profitable – then perhaps more will follow.  If this sounds like a “safe” approach to putting a film into production, then welcome to the one word summary of the film.

The movie generally follows the events of the first game (a re-imagining of which debuted on the PS4 a few weeks prior to the movie’s release, which, yes, was purposeful) – wannabe-hero Ratchet meets robot reject Clank, they fall into saving the world from Drek, who has a kooky badguy plot that involves blowing up worlds – and like that first game (and subsequent ones, if I’m being honest), the plot doesn’t do anything you don’t expect.  Even the comedy relief is timed and placed exactly as expected.  Instead, the heart of the series has always been… well, its heart.  It feels honest and good-spirited, and there’s always been this quirky elbow-nudge sense of humor behind everything, like we’re all wide-eyed about space adventures but feeling goofy about it at the same time, i.e. We Know This Is Silly But We Love It Anyway.  The games were very rewarding in that sense.  But they were rarely laugh out loud funny, and the film, for better or worse, hits those same beats.

Which is why I enjoyed it, because I’m already tuned into that.  And I already know Ratchet and Clank, whose personalities (and the “characters” surrounding them) the film completely shorthands.  So I’m not disagreeing with the reviews that are knocking the shallowness of the film.  I do think they’re overlooking the surprising subtleties to the body language and humor, but I agree that R&C is banking on cute characters and laser guns to get you through it, not the plot.  Also, since it’s an origin story and has to jam a Bad Guy and Character Arc into 90 minutes, the film inevitably shorts us on the wondrous sense of exploration and discovery the games allow.  But, alas, I expected that too.  I expected to spend an hour and a half with characters I love, and the movie did that, with the same sheepish grin as its bleep-bloop counterparts.