Film - Ron's Gone Wrong

These neat little kid’s films with a message always turn out to be right up my street. Ron’s Gone Wrong features cute robots; what’s not to love?

It’s the classic American bullying story about the one kid that doesn’t fit in, most often because of his home situation. In this case, Barney is being bought up by his dad Graham and his grandmother, Donka Pudowski. His dad is working all the hours on his business and is constantly on his phone, but doesn’t want Barney to get addicted to devices. Every kid in his school has their own B-Bot other than him. In this future world, everyone communicates through their robot friend and is constantly online, vying for popularity. 

Eventually, Barney is ecstatic to get one but, as the title suggests, all is not well with this B-Bot. This prompts the other story of the person (called Marc with a C) who invented it in good faith as a ‘Best Friend out of the Box’ for all kids and the power-hungry executive he works alongside him

Undoubtedly there’ll be a percentage of kids in every school whose parents, either can’t afford or as in this case, don’t understand the technology and how kids get bullied when they don’t fit in. Appalling as this is, in films, inevitably the hero of the hour is the bullied kid. I don’t think that’s a spoiler for this heart warmer.

7½/10