Even though I am still in my late 20s I have to be honest and say that I’m not really into video games at all so it should come to no surprise that I had no idea who Ratchet and Clank are. I never played video games all that much and by the time the Ratchet and Clank video games started coming out I just wasn’t into gaming at all. When I heard this movie was coming out I was a little surprised and sort of blindsided by it. I see a lot of movies and I love watching movie trailers and some how the brain trust behind the marketing of the Ratchet and Clank movie did not manage to get the trailer in front of my naked eyes. By the time I finally saw this movie a few days ago I can’t help but think it just got buried in favor of the game that came out two weeks before it or if the marketing really was just horribly handled. I guess I’ll never know unless it’s on the Ratchet and Clank Blu-ray special features. Honestly though there is no way I would buy a blu-ray of this movie so I never really will know.
Ratchet and Clank is about a young spaceship mechanic named Ratchet (James Arnold Taylor) who day dreams about being one of the peacekeeping Galactic Rangers. Planets are mysteriously starting to disappear and Ratchet learns that the leader of the Galactic Rangers Captain Qwark (Jim Ward) is on his way to Ratchet’s home planet of Veldin in search of a new recruit for the team. Ratchet tries out for the open spot, but Qwark tells him he is too small and it would be of no use. Ratchet leaves depressed and goes home. One night he is looking up at the stars when something amazing falls out of the sky. By the time he reaches it he realizes that it is a smart little robot and decides to call in Clank. Clank is a defective robot mistakenly made by Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti) who is responsible for the destruction of the missing planets. Clank tells Ratchet that the Galactic Rangers and their home planet will be attacked by Chairman Drek so Ratchet and Clank decide to team up and go save the day.
I can’t say that this is a horrible cartoon movie although I also can’t say it is all that great either. There just seems to be something way too familiar about this movie. Every character has been done a million times over and nothing in Ratchet and Clank seems very original or creative. Sure movies and stories borrow from other things but to make a good movie or write a good book you usually have to at least put your own twist on the borrowed material and I don’t think Ratchet and Clank does that. One of the easiest things they do is have the character Captain Qwark be a huge egotistical jerk and obviously that works as a gag, but it just isn’t funny enough to fill in for the idea that this movie just feels like a carbon copy of every other space or cartoon movie.
I don’t want to be too harsh on this movie because it really did almost win me over. There were a few spots that were somewhat humorous and I didn’t get into the characters a little bit. Unfortunately the plot is way too stuffed and the movie overall just made me feel bored. I realize that video games are hard to adapt into movies, but throwing a measly twenty million dollars at an animated mess is not the way to go.
Dave’s Rating- ★★½ (2½) out of ★★★★★(5)
