Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ron’s Gone Wrong’ on Disney+ and HBO Max, a Boy-And-His-Robot Story for the Social Media Age

Maybe it’s interesting that Fox’s Ron’s Gone Wrong is a rare instance where competing streamers – Disney+ and HBO Max – debut the same movie at the same time. More interesting, though, is how the animated movie introduces an original idea into the family entertainment-o-sphere (albeit with a few components derivative of other movies, but we’ll get to that in a minute here) instead of the usual franchise content. It’s the story of a loner kid whose malfunctioning-misfit version of a cloud-connected robot toy might just end up being his best friend – but trust me, it’s at least as heartwarming as that time your kid hugged their iPad like it’s a beloved binky and told it they loved it.

RON’S GONE WRONG: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Marc (voice of Justice Smith) is a nice guy with slumpy socks and good intentions, which makes him a terrible CEO of a massive tech giant, namely, Bubble. He introduces the B*Bot, a rolling talking Minion-shaped customizable learning quasi-AI smartcapsule that follows kids around and reflects their personalities back at them in the form of their online lives: everything they “like,” everything they post, every Disney-tied franchise film/TV series they’ve watched. The B*Bot makes smartphones look like calculators, and Teddy Ruxpin look like a doll made out of sticks and twine. Marc has all these dippy hippie-flower idealistic intentions for the B*Bot, which he insists will help kids connect with each other and make friends, and he promises to never, ever greedily harvest their data, uh huh, sure, OK bro, especially when you have a conspicuous dillweed like Andrew (Rob Delaney) at your side, trying to exploit the endeavor for the sake of “the shareholders,” who really are the invisible demon antagonists of this plot. The way the film introduces the bot seems slightly conceptually problematic, since it’s a touch more celebratory than satirical: HOORAY FOR PRODUCTS!

So every kid has a B*Bot except Barney (Jack Dylan Grazer), probably because Barney isn’t like every kid. He has a crazy Eastern European(ish) grandma (Olivia Colman) who cooks a lot of sausage, and his dad (Ed Helms) is a widower and overworked sweetheart of a novelty-trinket salesman. Barney collects rocks and plays chess and has a smelly pet goat, and the kids at his middle school think he’s weird, even those he was friends with when they were younger, like bullyish prankster Rich (Ricardo Hurtado) and serial social media influencer Savannah (Kylie Cantrall). All the other kids park their B*Bots in a big rack at school, and as soon as the bell rings, the screens-on-wheels join the children, so they can once again basically become the human property of Bubble Corp.

Naturally, Barney wants a B*Bot, but Dad and Grandma get him – ready your sad trombones – rock chisels and sausage for his birthday. One gets the impression that affording a pricey multimedia device may be a stretch for this family, but Dad does his best and acquires a scratch-’n’-dent model on the cheap. Barney tries to boot it up, but the bot furtzes and pizzles and soon subverts the Bubble algorithm, essentially becoming a tabula rasa for Barney to color as he pleases. Barney names it Ron, an abbreviation of its serial number, and tries to teach him how to be his friend. Inevitably, Ron incites pandemonium, because he exists outside the usual parental controls and safety features. He whups the playground bullies and then, upon realizing he should be making “friends” for Barney, covers the town with photocopied “friend requests.” Hey, he’s trying. Meanwhile, Marc and Andrew and their Bubble subordinates catch wind of the rogue B*Bot and do their mightiest to apprehend Ron. Through all their travails, Barney and Ron become best friends by finding some true common ground: their inability to make friends. Sup on that irony, people.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ron’s roots are in classical Pinocchio/Frankenstein’s monster types, but superficially, he’s a Big Hero 6 Baymax wannabe crossed with an is-he-or-is-he-not-artificially-intelligent bot like WALL-E. He also has an inner glow and a propensity for innocent mischief just like E.T.

Performance Worth Watching: Olivia Colman is a hoot, her voice swamped in a thick Slovako-slavi-stan-whatever accent.

Memorable Dialogue: Andrew celebrates the public’s around-the-clock use of B*Bots: “We’ve finally done it – we’ve ended sleep!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Ron’s Gone Wrong intertwines a familiar outsider/misfit sentimental youth-oriented story with some unfocused social commentary about late-capitalism stuff like corporate data-mining and the exploitation of social media users. I imagine big corps like Appl- er, I mean, Bubble are populated with well-intentioned Marcs alongside evil exploitationeers like Andrew, but the way things in our reality are doomscrolling straight to hell, one may be convinced the scales tip towards the latter jerks.

Not that such fodder is the primary thematic emphasis of this generally enjoyable family movie. We just want to see Barney be happy, not by fitting in, but by showing his true self and seeing others accept him as is. It has more poignant things to say about the travails of middle school than the relatively cynical Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise. That’s a nice message for Ron to convey, although it kind of fudges and stammers its way through an assertion that screen time needs to be balanced with real-life face time in order for modern-age human beings to be well-rounded and actualized. It’s consistently funny, and holds back on the sentiment just enough to avoid the usual preachy messaging of on-the-nose kid fare. Of course, unless I’m mistaken, I think the plot resolves with the creation of the singularity, which is a whole other sack of doughnuts.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Ron Goes Wrong sometimes feels like a kid sibling to Big Hero 6 and Netflix’s wonderful The Mitchells vs. the Machines – watch it again! – but it’s clever and entertaining, and stands on its own well enough.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Watch Ron's Gone Wrong on HBO Max

Watch Ron's Gone Wrong on Disney+