Ratchet and Clank (2016)

Number Rolled: 39

Movie Name/Year: Ratchet and Clank (2016)

Tagline: Ready to kick some asteroid!

Genre: Animation, Action, Adventure, Comedy

Length: 94 minutes

Rating: PG

Production Companies: Gramercy Pictures, Rainmaker Entertainment, Film Financial Services, Peak Distribution Partners, Blockade Entertainment, CNHK Media, Insomniac Games, Sony Computer Entertainment America

Producer: Delna Bhesania, Xinyu Bian, Connie Booth, Mark D. Chen, Viola Chen, Brian Cleveland, Jason Cleveland, Alan Elkin, Jeremy Fan, T.J. Fixman, Brad Foxhoven, Michael Hefferon, Jason Huang, Marcia Gwendolyn Jones, Harry Linden, Shawn McCorkindale, Sun Ming, Kevin Munroe, Jin Na, Edward Noeltner, Greg Phillips, Bryant Pike, Dan Reardon, Richard Rionda Del Castro, Riley Russell, Ryan Schneider, David Charles Sheldon, Jared Underwood, Slava Vladimirov, Kim Dent Wilder, David Wohl, Vincent Ye, Harley Zhao

Director: Kevin Munroe, Jericca Cleland

Writer: T.J. Fixman, Kevin Munroe, Gerry Swallow, Daniel Nascimento

Actors: Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson, Jim Ward, Armin Shimerman, Vincent Tong, Andrew Cownden, James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Sylvester Stallone, Lee Tockar, Brian Dobson, Tabitha St. Germain, Brad Swaile, Brian Drummond, Cole Howard, Ian James Corlett, Alessandro Juliani, Rebecca Shoichet, Don Briggs

Stunt Doubles: None

Blurb from Netflix: Affable alien Ratchet longs to be a Galactic Ranger and might get the chance when rogue robot Clank tells him of evil Drek’s plot to destroy a galaxy.

Selina’s Point of View:

Although I’ve been gaming for the majority of my life, my early gaming days were a bit on the off-brand side. I mean, back then Sega was considered a giant, but now they’re a thing of the past. Before that I had my Amiga and my refrigerator-shaped grey Gameboy.

The Ratchet and Clank video game wasn’t that early on in gaming, but I still find myself feeling the need to explain my history a bit. Right after Sega Genesis, I was introduced to RPGs, such as Final Fantasy for the original PlayStation, by a close friend of mine. Once that happened, I lost interest in platformers for a long time.

Basically, that’s a long way of saying that when Ratchet and Clank came out for the PlayStation 2 in 2002, I had no immediate interest in it and ignored it in place of whatever RPG had come out that year. Pretty sure I was still on Final Fantasy X at the time. Either that or revisiting Final Fantasy IX for the card game.

Point is, I never played the game. As a result, I can’t compare this film’s plot, characters, or overall style to its source material.

That said, I did enjoy the film enough for me to become more curious about the game.

The plot was on the ridiculous side, but it’s a kid’s movie based on a video game. Of course the plot was going to be ridiculous. I feel like that can’t be held against it.

It was a lot of fun to watch, even though I had to pause several times because I had some annoying health issues during it. Nothing big, but it distracted me enough that I can definitely tell you that if the film were not as cute as it was I never would have been able to fall back into it.

Is this the kind of film that blew my mind enough for me to go around praising its name? No. But I’m also not the target audience.

I think it’s a decent film. It’s worth a watch if you’ve got nothing better to do.

Cat’s Point of View:

I’ve said before that I’m a sucker for movie adaptations of video games, right? Of course, this is within reason. There are a few films wandering around various stages of development which are game-based that have me scratching my head as to how the pixelated shenanigans could possibly be an interesting story. Ratchet and Clank, however, is a no-brainer. It’s a well-established game series, has a good sized fanbase, and easily translates to stories that people would actually be interested in even if they never played one of the games.

I’m one of those that never played the game even once, but I was familiar with it and its characters at least to a small degree. I’ve wanted to play the game but just have never owned a console it was released on. Back to the movie!

When this film was released last year, it made my Top 20 Movies to Look Out For in April, coming in at the #3 spot. After watching, I’d have to say that it was well deserving of that placement. This was actually my second watch-through of this movie, as my family and I watched it shortly after its release. It was fun to revisit the animated feature for another family-night.

Ratchet and Clank sports an insanely good cast, which is largely comprised of voice actors that reprised their roles from their game characters. I love it when an established franchise stays true to the elements that embody the characters to their loyal fans.

On top of that, you’ve got the voice talents of John Goodman (The Princess and the Frog, The Monuments Men, Atomic Blonde), Bella Thorne (Underdogs, Big Sky, Shovel Buddies), Rosario Dawson (Seven Pounds, Unstoppable, The LEGO Batman Movie), and Sylvester Stallone (Shade, Zookeeper, Reach Me).

Then you have Armin Shimerman (The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, DC Nation's Farm League, Regular Show), who is a prolific voice actor, at the helm of the Dr. Nefarious character. He’s not only the original voice for the character in the games, but he’s also notably recognized having voiced the Quark character in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999). That’s a funny little ‘6 degrees’ type coincidence, considering the name of one of this movie’s characters is Captain Qwark.

While that wouldn’t be considered an Easter egg, per se, the movie is also full of all sorts of little fun references. One of my favorites has to be the ‘Wilhelm scream.’

All told, the story was interesting and entertaining and we had a lot of fun watching it even for the second time around. I would recommend this movie in a heartbeat, and wouldn’t mind watching it again.

Languages

Speech Available: English

Subtitles Available: English

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 17%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 43%

Metascore - 29/100

Metacritic User Score – 6.4/10

IMDB Score – 5.6/10

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 3.5/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 4.5/5

P.S.  Two after-credit scenes. One after the first part, one after the rest of it.

Movie Trailer: