Ron's Gone Wrong

This movie was so disturbing to me as a parent and I'm very liberal. There is no redeeming quality to this movie or beneficial message here. It only reinforces the notion that social media doesn't lead to good things (except hopefully this post persuading others not to watch this movie) and when are we going to learn that it's not OK for kids to be so dependent on devices. It is normal in the movie for kids to have robots follow them around at school (not for school related learning) but to be constantly connected to social media, have an all access pass to bully other kids, play video games and spend every free minute of their lives commenting on other's instead of having genuine relationships and experiencing real life. I was really hoping at the end for the movie to redeem itself and offer a beneficial lesson, or at least get rid of the robots, which basically were moving iphones, but no such luck. The viewer watches the modern day outcast kid, Barney, go through the classic theme of struggling to fit in at school by not having friends, getting bullied, having parental figures that are not in touch with his reality, pretending he's OK all the while. At the end you're hoping for that big, in your face message to the kids watching that you're better off without all this noise of social media, apps, likes/dislikes, having others track your every move, but it falls way short of that. Somehow the robots magically make everything all better and make it easier for people to be friends that normally wouldnt be. It made no sense to me. I left the theater wanting to move to a remote island to shield my kids from the impending talk of why can't I have a phone, everyone else has one. So sad we wasted our day off from school watching this junk instead of taking a hike. One last comment... again I'm not super conservative, but why does a kids movie have to use the word Hell twice? Next time writers, please use your device's thesaurus to come up with something more creative.

Our family (including 8yo) tried to watch this , and the adults ended up being offended and annoyed, feeling like this was a waste of energy. We turned it off early. It seemed to have a lot of promise at first, but the caricatures of the eastern euro family members (father and grandmother) were a bit much -- felt rather unkind vs. good natured humor -- and truth be told, were the factor that led us to turn it off. But there was plenty that led us to doubt the movie alongside that part. For example, the everybody-has-robots part and the glorification of the company who introduced it to the world is a satire on the way the modern world is, but for the audience of kids, it's presented as an accepted and acceptable norm. There were also some interactions that unnecessarily introduced concepts and language ahead of its time, for the 8yo. Yeah -- kids are actually mean in real life sometimes, and school can be a tough environment that is worth acknowledging and dealing with in stories... especially if kids are already familiar with it in real life. But, despite the promise of the high quality production and a rough understanding of it having decent ratings, too many wince-worthy moments within the first 20 minutes added up to a dud, for us.