Simply put, within the intrinsic limitations of its scope, "Ratchet and Clank" is a very good movie.
Reviewing and rating animated movies, as opposed to the more typical live-action movies, is a bit problematic for two reasons.
Firstly, live-action movies have the advantage that they break down into a collection of individual genres and, as somewhat of a general rule, movies are usually evaluated from within the context of their own genre. So "Das Boot", "Operation Petticoat", and "The Hunt for Red October", while they may all be movies about submarines, they're such different movies from different genres that they don't lend themselves to being compared with each other or rated relative to each other. And so they aren't. Imagine if you had to compare and contrast "Alien" and "Schindler's List". You might be able to make a reasonable comparison on some individual aspects of these movies, such as Best Actor or some other technical facet, but I can't imagine how you'd successfully review these movies side-by-side.
Animated movies, on the other hand, even at this late date, are all simply lumped together in one giant basket, "animated feature". My best guess is that this is an artefact of the history of animated movies: early on in the evolution of movies, the only kinds of animated movies that were in common circulation were, for example, Disney animated features. By definition therefore, anything animated was a "cartoon" and, as everybody knew, cartoons were exclusively aimed at kids. Obviously all animated features were part of a single genre.
As animated features grew and expanded to encompass more sophisticated themes and story lines, the larger worldview of them has not evolved to keep up. The devoted fans of animation see the distinctions, but serious "cinema professionals" still see animation, for all the billions of dollars it rakes in, as the redheaded, freckled little brother of "serious cinema" that isn't taken seriously.
Secondly, and as a sort of second wallop of a one-two punch of disadvantages, some of Pixar's movies (the pair of Nemo movies, "Up") have set the bar of audience expectation so impossibly high that other animated movies, artificially forced to compete within a single, "animated feature" global genre, suffer at the hands of reviewers promulgating the single-genre colloquial perspective.
"Ratchet and Clank" simply doesn't fall into the same category of animated film as, for example, "Up". It's an animated film adaptation of a popular series of video games, and is largely targeted at the same audience as that of the games and perhaps adults nostalgic for those games. It doesn't pretend to explore sophisticated themes of death, loneliness, coping with mental challenges and so on. As such, it should be reviewed and rated relative to its own class and the type of movie it tries to be.
As mentioned previously, "Ratchet and Clank" is a very good movie. The nature of its video game origins does naturally limit the characters and plot lines available for the movie to explore. Character definitions were established years ago by the video games. The movie cannot depart significantly from those definitions or the knowledgeable fans of the games will balk and object. At the same time, the movie has to subtly establish the character's personalities within the movie or people unfamiliar with the games will be confused. It's a difficult balancing act when you think about it, and the movie pulls it off pretty well.
The animation is a very high quality, facial animation is expressive and very accurately synchronized with the dialogue, and the music is satisfactorily interesting and varied.
The characters are somewhat shallow and play close to their stereotypes, which you sort of have to expect from a fan-oriented kid's movie, but the adults that have to accompany the kids to the movie will get more than a few chuckles from the dialogue that is as witty as allowable.
In short, the movie is exactly what you would expect it to be and a bit more because it's an exceptionally well done version of what it is.
Reviewing and rating animated movies, as opposed to the more typical live-action movies, is a bit problematic for two reasons.
Firstly, live-action movies have the advantage that they break down into a collection of individual genres and, as somewhat of a general rule, movies are usually evaluated from within the context of their own genre. So "Das Boot", "Operation Petticoat", and "The Hunt for Red October", while they may all be movies about submarines, they're such different movies from different genres that they don't lend themselves to being compared with each other or rated relative to each other. And so they aren't. Imagine if you had to compare and contrast "Alien" and "Schindler's List". You might be able to make a reasonable comparison on some individual aspects of these movies, such as Best Actor or some other technical facet, but I can't imagine how you'd successfully review these movies side-by-side.
Animated movies, on the other hand, even at this late date, are all simply lumped together in one giant basket, "animated feature". My best guess is that this is an artefact of the history of animated movies: early on in the evolution of movies, the only kinds of animated movies that were in common circulation were, for example, Disney animated features. By definition therefore, anything animated was a "cartoon" and, as everybody knew, cartoons were exclusively aimed at kids. Obviously all animated features were part of a single genre.
As animated features grew and expanded to encompass more sophisticated themes and story lines, the larger worldview of them has not evolved to keep up. The devoted fans of animation see the distinctions, but serious "cinema professionals" still see animation, for all the billions of dollars it rakes in, as the redheaded, freckled little brother of "serious cinema" that isn't taken seriously.
Secondly, and as a sort of second wallop of a one-two punch of disadvantages, some of Pixar's movies (the pair of Nemo movies, "Up") have set the bar of audience expectation so impossibly high that other animated movies, artificially forced to compete within a single, "animated feature" global genre, suffer at the hands of reviewers promulgating the single-genre colloquial perspective.
"Ratchet and Clank" simply doesn't fall into the same category of animated film as, for example, "Up". It's an animated film adaptation of a popular series of video games, and is largely targeted at the same audience as that of the games and perhaps adults nostalgic for those games. It doesn't pretend to explore sophisticated themes of death, loneliness, coping with mental challenges and so on. As such, it should be reviewed and rated relative to its own class and the type of movie it tries to be.
As mentioned previously, "Ratchet and Clank" is a very good movie. The nature of its video game origins does naturally limit the characters and plot lines available for the movie to explore. Character definitions were established years ago by the video games. The movie cannot depart significantly from those definitions or the knowledgeable fans of the games will balk and object. At the same time, the movie has to subtly establish the character's personalities within the movie or people unfamiliar with the games will be confused. It's a difficult balancing act when you think about it, and the movie pulls it off pretty well.
The animation is a very high quality, facial animation is expressive and very accurately synchronized with the dialogue, and the music is satisfactorily interesting and varied.
The characters are somewhat shallow and play close to their stereotypes, which you sort of have to expect from a fan-oriented kid's movie, but the adults that have to accompany the kids to the movie will get more than a few chuckles from the dialogue that is as witty as allowable.
In short, the movie is exactly what you would expect it to be and a bit more because it's an exceptionally well done version of what it is.