A new contender has entered the ring for family-friendly animated films… kind of. This is the first feature release from UK-based Locksmith Animation, although the actual animation is courtesy of Double Negative, the rendering wizards behind a lot of Christopher Nolan’s bendiest works like Inception and Interstellar. They don’t usually dip into full-on animated works, usually just accompanying live-action films, but this shows them in pretty solid territory as far as visuals go. The animation quality is up to the mainstream standard as far as lighting and the like, the character designs are just goofy enough to work on the kiddie level without being distractingly stylistic, and the design for the titular robot is simplified in a way an actual tech company would engineer, and he's quite adorable the longer he stays in-frame.
Now, with The Mitchells Vs. The Machines still fresh in my memory from earlier in the year, the premise of this film definitely sounds familiar, focusing on a middle school kid (Jack Dylan Grazer, who played Eddie in It: Chapter One) whose only friend is a ‘defective’ social media-connected robot called Ron (Zach Galifianakis at his most unrecognisable). It’s a story about how interactions between people have been changed by technology, with a specific look at how it affects the already-awkward in social situations. The Internet and all things connected to it, when you really break them down, are designed for introverts; for people who want social connections, but struggle with more face-to-face scenarios. But as social media has advanced over the last several years, it’s revealed itself to be just as difficult, if not more so, than the alternative.
And through Grazer’s Barney, the film gets into how weird a lot of mundane social media activity really is when you compare it with interacting in the real world, and how it can end up warping what a person considers to be a ‘friend’ in the first place. That’s one of the bigger hurdles I remember from my school days, where I had this need for social interaction… but I wasn’t entirely sure what friends were supposed to do together or how often because I had no frame of reference for it. I also sympathised heavily with how much those around Barney, like his teacher played by Ruby Wax, try and get him friends but it only makes the situation worse because it makes the inner desperation loud and clear for all in earshot. It’s not a good look.
As Barney and Ron begin bonding, both seen as socially defective by their peers and overseers, their budding friendship is quite lovely to watch grow and flourish. It acknowledges that friendship isn’t something so simply that a scientific algorithm is capable of mapping it out in its entirety, because there’s no one right way to make friends and interact with others. It delves a bit into the impact of technology on children, from the self-esteem life support that social media platforms can become to how a lot of it adds up to tech companies looking for more ways to squeeze money out of their customers, but it’s ultimately more about the mechanics of human interaction than actual mechanics.
The result of which got me more than a little teary-eyed at times, partly because I still remember vividly what is was like to be like Barney in primary and high school (and hell, even today, I still have those tendencies), and partly because the core relationship between him and Ron is just that damn affecting. I meant what I said about how unrecognisable Galifianakis is here, portraying not just an extension of his go-to personality but as an actual character (similar to what Scott Adsit did with Big Hero 6), and it adds a lot to the emotional weight of what’s going on and who it’s happening to.
It does take a bit to get past the recollection cringe, given how isolated Barney is at first (outside of Ed Helms as his dad and Olivia Colman as his Bulgarian grandmother, in another unrecognisable turn), but the total package is quite heartfelt, got some pretty solid quips and observations about modern technology, and its message feels like something I could have learnt from as a teenager. Much like The Mitchells, it doesn’t go full “technology is evil” to make its point, but rather get the audience to reconsider how they are using that technology. Is it to make real connections between people, or are we just letting ourselves let the algorithm dictate who we are?
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