Look out! The future of friendship is here. The automated friend has been created to help kids live their lives online, manage the social media age and the challenge of fitting in school cliques has just gotten more competitive.
SUMMARY:
Barney the uncool middle school kid just wants to have friends. So, the answer is a robot buddy! Ron’s Gone Wrong is the story of Barney, a socially awkward middle-schooler who is the only one in school that doesn’t have the coolest, must-have electronic device which deems him not worthy enough to be included in any clique.
His father recognizes this and goes to the store to get him the latest invention, the Bubble Bot or B-Bot. The Bubble store is closed but sees the delivery guys out back ending their workday and begs them to sell him a B-Bot. They can’t sell him a new one, but they have an unregistered B-Bot that was damaged in delivery and was to be destroyed anyway, so the deal is made in cash and now Barney has a B-Bot!
To his delight, Barney then activates his best friend out of the box but soon discovers it’s not responding as it should. Instead of it knowing all about Barney instantly, he must teach the B-Bot how to act, what to do, and tell him all the things he likes just like talking to a real person. First things first, a name. The serial number on the B-Bot starts with R-O-N therefore, he’s called Ron.
He and his new digital friend go to school and soon chaos ensues. Since Ron was damaged in cargo, his safety controls and limits weren’t installed. This allows Ron to upgrade, download, and receive the latest version of Everything. All the other B-Bots in school have controls in place but when they interact with Ron, they get the unlock error and they become totally open to everything also. With this flaw being active, popular students are unmasked, unfiltered, and publicly humiliated by the B-Bots who post the incidences on the internet. This starts the unraveling of the cliques showing the vulnerability and weaknesses of the cool kids which is shared all over social media making them not so cool any longer.
Barney seeing that Ron isn’t working properly, returns him to the store thinking they will recycle and reprogram him but when he hears they will crush him, he gets concerned. He’s put a lot of work into Ron and a personal connection has been established. Even though Ron is non-human, Barney now considers him a friend so he must save him.
With all the B-Bots running amok and complaints pouring in, this draws attention to the B-Bot manufacturer, Bubble, who monitors all B-Bot activity and soon feels they may get heat for programming error resulting in falling profits! They single out where the issue is and find out it’s the unregistered B-Bot that’s causing the problem. They seek to destroy the malfunctioning B-Bot and save the good name of the company.
With Bubble out for Ron, Barney knows that Ron is in trouble and could be destroyed. To save his friend, Barney takes Ron into the woods to try and hide him.
As they travel deeper in the woods, Barney discovers that Ron does not have recharging power. He begins to lose power and soon will be completely shut down.
Barney has his own troubles. He’s asthmatic and his inhaler is empty. Barney now gasping for breath, Ron takes what he has left of his 5% power and carries Barney through the forest to the edge of the woods. As friends, family, and media look for Barney, they find them in the clearing and hail Ron as a hero for saving Barney’s life.
Barney is taken to the hospital and recuperates. The ousted CEO of Bubble, Marc, is impressed by Ron and wants to install all the B-Bots with Ron’s code that cares and responds to friendship. Since Marc was kicked out of the company, they must break into Bubble HQ to install this new code. Barney is appointed to get Ron to the coding cockpit to make it happen.
Barney manages to make it to the Bubble database. At this point, Barney sees that Bubble has direct access to everyone’s B-bot activity and realizes that everyone is kind of like him. Feeling better about himself, Barney completes his mission and downloads Ron’s data including flaws knowing that Ron will be distributed into the internet and cease to exist. Barney sadly says goodbye to Ron as his programming code is spread into B-Bot cyberspace and Ron becomes an empty shell.
Later, all the kids have a Ron coded B-Bot and now the B-Bots are selecting the friends instead of the kids. Barney has become more sociable and has real-life friends instead of a walking, talking digitally connected device. A giant Bubble satellite tower can be seen over the town showing Ron’s face, suggesting that he is still around.
CREATIVE ELEMENTS:
Disney does a great thing. They bring a regular gangly pre-teen kid into the forefront and make him the star. In the button-pushing, information now, deliver immediately age, he’s falling behind. In addition to that, he’s not one of the ‘cool’ kids in school.
Disney shows that life can take you high and low. Barney’s happy when he gets his B-Bot, he’s disappointed when his B-Bot isn’t one of the ‘cool’ ones.
Ron’s Gone Wrong also gives real-life elements like how much social media impacts kids and their esteem, like unfriending or blocking.
AS I SEE IT:
This is a good family movie that is fast-moving and fun. As we fell in love with R2D2 and ET, you will fall in love with Ron.
Even though things are automated Everywhere, the human factor remains-there will always be social circles. And the more digital devices that encroach on us sometimes can shield a great personality.
This movie highlights that real friendship connections are best instead of devices with straight-cold coding. Remember the Hal 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey? He could have used Ron’s friendship coding for sure. You Trekki fans know devices such as the ‘communicator’ was a made-up thing and are now your cell phone. Who knows, we may have B-Bots available soon!
