"Ratchet & Clank" ADVANCE Review

As an 8-year-old, my favorite video game was Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation. I loved the spinning marsupial so much, I made my own series of poorly illustrated 5-page books about his adventures. Needless to say, they sucked - I explained a boost in Crash's powers once by morphing him with Goku and Wolverine - but the love was there, the love of telling stories about really cool bandicoots.

...I didn't play for the realism. At least the real one's cute.

I never played Ratchet and Clank. I opted for a Nintendo over a PS2, but the duo were Crash Bandicoots to a new generation, and as such, popular enough to get a movie made about them. And just like my 3rd-grade fan-fiction, the story's bonkers and rips off a lot, but the love is still there.

Ratchet (James Arnold Taylor) is a Lombax (think a cat with fox ears and a lion's tail) working as a mechanic on the desert planet Veldin. He dreams of joining the Galactic Rangers, saving the universe alongside his idol, Captain Qwark (Jim Ward). When Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti) starts vaporizing planets with his Deplanetizer, the Rangers search for new recruits to help take down the menace. Ratchet tries out, and being a runt, he flunks. But after coming across a little robot named Clank (David Kaye), who has Drek's plans; and accidentally saving the city, the two team up with the Rangers to stop Drek.

The only thing missing is a cantina - the movie is Star Wars from beginning to end. It's not just characters: dialogues, shots, and whole scenes are lifted. Ratchet racing his ship through the caverns is almost a replica of the podracing scene in The Phantom Menace. This isn't a note-for-note ripoff; neither is it cynical, like Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. The film playfully parodies the movies, and while some of it falls flat, other jokes are gems (acknowledging how horribly under-equipped the four Galactic Rangers are against Drek and his legions of Warbots).

The movie also throws in references to other movies; callbacks to old PlayStation games; "current" jokes about texting; winks to the audience that the movie is self-aware to varying degrees of success. At best, I chuckled; at worst, my eyes rolled.

None of the characters are bad, but few stand out. Ratchet is the bumbling, naive hero; Clank sounds like a British professor talking to a fan. Jim Ward is enjoyable as Captain Qwark, hitting the sweet spot of lovable idiot and narcissist. His expressions are priceless, and when I laughed, it was mostly because of him.

The action is rapid, quick-reflexed. Ratchet and the Rangers (band name, anyone?) cycle through weapons in the blink of an eye: ice blasts, fusion grenades, flamethrowers, and the Omniwrench (nothing special, just a really cool name). We get a great variation of ground assaults, space chases, and one-on-one dukefests. All in all,  if a video game is to become a movie, this is how you translate levels to the big screen.

I don't know why Super Mario Bros. couldn't have been handled right the first time. The job is fool-proof: make an adventure starring two brothers saving a princess from a bad guy. It doesn't need time travel or a dystopian future, or Dennis Hopper screaming "Monkey!" Just keep it simple, that's where Ratchet and Clank shines. The game wasn't a sprawling epic, so why would the movie be? The joy is in the action and wacky humor, and that's what the movie gives us, nothing more nor less. If you have kids, aged 4 to 10, they'll have fun with a matinee. This serves best as a solid rental. Thank you all for reading. I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.

Ratchet and Clank comes out April 29th.