Ratchet & Clank

One's a feline alien, and the other's a robot. Together, they fight Galactic crime. They've done it on Playstation games since 2002. And now, Ratchet & Clank are together on the big screen. It's an admirable adaptation of a video game, though nothing Oscar-worthy.

Ratchet the Lombax (James Arnold Taylor) is a mechanic on Planet Veldin. He's the only Lombax on this side of the galaxy, or perhaps ever. Employed and raised by Grim (John Goodman), Ratchet wants to leave the planet and join his heroes, The Galactic Rangers. What luck that they have open tryouts on Veldin just now. But he's immediately rejected by the Rangers' egotistical doofus commander, Captain Qwark (Jim Ward). So it seems Ratchet has to resign himself to mediocrity. It's not like adventure will fall out of the sky...

Oh wait, it does.

The evil Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti) wants to make his own ideal planet. He sets out to build it with the help of his De-Planetizer space-station. But since it, well, blows up planets, The Galactic Rangers set out to stop him. But not if Drek and his War Bots can stop them first. A glitch results in one War Bot that's small and nice. This "defect" is Clank (David Kaye), and he escapes termination from Drek's henchbot, Victor Von Ion (Sylvester Stallone).

Back to the second paragraph...

Clank crash-lands on Veldin and is found by Ratchet. Ratchet and Clank join forces to stop the War Bots from killing the Rangers. They become instant celebrities, which threatens Qwark's stardom. That gives Drek some ideas on how to deal with the Galactic Rangers.

The plot sounds like a lot of animated movies. But its sense of humor saves it from banality. The captions which introduce a new location come with a joke ("Cue Bad Guy Speech in 3 ... 2 ... 1" took me by surprise). There's also a few bits of slapstick and referential humor here and there. Game fans are sure to find delight in the game references; meanwhile, I found Ratchet's Ranger crash course funny as Qwark gets exhausted by the weapon screwups. But the villains provide the best humor. In particular, the games' longest-running foe, Dr. Nefarious (Armin Shimerman), makes for a delightfully over-the-top scientist.

The problems come with the story. Its 93 minute runtime is paced both exceptionally fast and exceptionally slow. A certain character turns evil, realizes he's been betrayed, and is still evil until Ratchet tells him not to be (Was something jumbled in writing?). Ratchet gets blamed for the first attack on Drek going south for reasons that weren't adequately explained. Although they were voiced well, the characters felt too one-dimensional at times.

Like any good video game, Ratchet & Clank looks good. The animation and scenery is detailed and colorful. The character designs are good updates of the original PS2 designs. The new characters fit right in with established favorites. This was great work for a $20 million movie.

For all of its faults, Ratchet & Clank at least attempts to make a story out of a video game. It wasn't a great story, but it's the thought that counts. Newcomers to the franchise won't get lost in the shuffle. Longtime players will also find some fun out of it. Perhaps the great Video Game movie will come. But we'll just have to wait at its now loading screen.