‘Ratchet & Clank’ doesn’t meet standards of namesake video game
Looking at the history of movies based on video games, there are a few basic rules for filmmakers to follow:
1. Don’t make movies based on video games.
2. If you have to make the movie, forget that it originally was a video game.
3. Cast a major role for Milla Jovovich.
The producers of “Ratchet & Clank” ignore each of these rules in their adaptation of the popular PlayStation game.
And yet, if we were grading on a curve, “Ratchet & Clank” would fare pretty well. It’s by no means memorably atrocious. Instead, its badness has an anonymous quality, ensuring the film will appear on few “worst video-game film of all time” lists, mostly because no one will recall its existence. I watched “Ratchet & Clank” less than 24 hours before writing this, taking notes throughout, and I can barely remember it.
The film begins with Ratchet, a catlike alien and spaceship mechanic who wants to be an elite Galactic Ranger. He teams with acerbic droid Clank to fight endless waves of robotic soldiers, while exchanging oneliners with bad guy Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti).
All of the above worked fantastically in the innovative video games “Ratchet & Clank” and “Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando” in the early 2000s. In a market filled with stonefaced shoot-em-ups and ironyfree fights to the death, the storytelling and dialogue from developers Insomniac Games stood out as very smart and witty.
Transferred to the animated film universe of the 2010s, with “The Lego Movie” and one or
two Pixar movies every year, these same plot lines and jokes are nothing special. The alien galaxy, that looked so amazing in 2002 on the just-released PlayStation 2 system, seems hastily conceived on the big screen, with a lot of motion but very little depth. Another negative: You can put down a video game any time you want. Once you pay your money, you’re stuck with “Ratchet & Clank” for 94 straight minutes.
And it’s not a fast 94 minutes.
“Ratchet & Clank” unfolds the way time passes at the DMV. There’s a single television episode’s worth of plot in this movie, stretched out into feature length with a series of unremarkable battles.
The positives? My 8-year-old loved it. But he would eat dinosaurshaped chicken nuggets for every meal if I let him, so let’s not consider his opinion. Some of the weapons are pretty cool, and Clank (voice by David Kaye) is a fun character. Directors Jericca Cleland and Kevin Munroe don’t seem to be carelessly cashing in. They make an effort to reflect the vibe of the game, which fans will appreciate.
But if you don’t already have a poster of Ratchet and Clank on your wall, there’s nothing in this movie that will make you want to put one there. With so many good family film offerings — “The Jungle Book” and “Zootopia” are both still in theaters — this world is best left in the brimming video-game movie refuse bin.
phartlaub@sfchronicle.com