'Ratchet & Clank': Animated clunker, based on the PlayStation game

Based on a popular PlayStation game, the sci-fi animated feature Ratchet & Clank seeks to capture the family movie audience, as well as the gamer crowd. But it doesn't feel like a feature-length film. It's more like watching four episodes of a Saturday morning cartoon mashed together.

The film is a basic space-hero story about Ratchet (James Arnold Taylor, also the voice in the video game), a young lombax (a catlike creature), that dreams of joining the Galactic Rangers, but finds that the hero business is much more complicated than it seems.

Ratchet gets his opportunity when the planets in his galaxy are threatened with "deplanetization" by the evil overload Dreck (Paul Giamatti), a sluglike creature with a ponytail mullet who rides around on a Segway. He has teamed up with Dr. Nefarious (Armin Shimerman), an alien mad scientist, and the two plot for world domination.

The only things standing in their way are the Galactic Rangers, a fame-obsessed, violent, and egotistical crew.

The story line is essentially ripped from Star Wars. A feisty young loner from a faraway planet dreams of joining an elite group of warriors to save the universe from dark and evil forces.

Ratchet's helper Clank (David Kaye, also from the video game), a logical British robot, is essentially a shrunken C-3PO. His other pals, including the gruff mechanic Grimroth (John Goodman), who took him in as a youngster, as well as the sassy female warriors Cora (Bella Thorne) and Elaris (Rosario Dawson), are amalgamations from various sci-fi and Star Wars-esque stories.

There's nothing wrong with this kind of genre familiarity. The film is quite chaotic, and the formula will help keep you on track. It's just good guys vs. bad guys.

The script is powered by rapid-fire jokes, about 20 percent of which actually land. Much of the humor relies on a hyper-sarcastic Disney Channel-style line delivery. Ranger Cora continually sighs about wanting to shoot someone, now, please.

The film is obsessed with firepower, as the Rangers' suits allow them to materialize different weapons into their hands at will. Coming from a video-game perspective, this makes sense. A user can cycle through customizable choices.

But from a storytelling perspective, the obsession with guns in a movie aimed at children is troubling, in poor taste, and lazy writing to boot.

Ratchet is much more interesting when he's using his practical know-how and Clank's smarts to outwit the bad guys.