Hi, everyone, welcome back to Movie Buff’s theater!
My Monster- Fest may not have been as successful this year as I had planned due to how busy I ended up being (I didn’t even get to review the ‘Fright Night’ remake, but I may post my review of that some time soon if I have time just to finish writing it), but I was thinking that, since there are so many films coming out this month and December that I’ve been really looking forward to seeing, I figured I should do reviews of some of them. For this first installment, I’ll look at Disney’s latest animated offering, ‘Wreck- It Ralph.’ Directed by Rich Moore (Who had never directed a feature film before, but had directed several episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Futurama,’ including such classic ‘Simpsons’ episodes as ‘The Telltale Head,’ ‘Lisa’s Substitute’ and ‘Marge Vs. The Monorail,’ and ‘Futurama’’s pilot episode), it features the voice talents of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Ed O’Neill, and Dennis Haysbert.
Wreck- it Ralph (Reilly) is the large, hulking bad guy of a ‘Donkey- Kong’- esque retro arcade game called ‘Fix- it Felix Jr..’ For 30 years, he’s been trying to wreck the apartment building that was built over his former home, while the well- loved hero Fix- it Felix (McBrayer) repairs it as the object of the game and gets medals for beating the game. Ralph has gotten tired of being the bad guy in the game and having everybody hate him, so he decides to go off and find a way to become a hero and get a medal of his own to gain some respect.
He gets his chance when he learns of a new game just installed in the arcade, ‘Hero’s Duty,’ an intense first- person shooter light- gun game that looks sort of like a cross between ‘Metroid’ and ‘Halo,’ in which the winners get medals. So, he goes into that game (The various games in the arcade are all connected to the same surge protector plug system, which on the inside is a subway station type area called ‘Game Central Station’ that lets characters enter into different games, though any character who dies in a game that isn’t his own dies for good), and meets Sgt. Calhoun (Lynch), the tough- talking, no- nonsense heroine of the game, leading soldiers in fighting these nasty alien creatures called Cy- Bugs. While Ralph has some trouble in the nightmarish game, he manages to get a medal, but as he’s in an escape pod trying to get out of the game, a freshly- hatched Cy- Bug gets into the pod as well.
While desperately trying to both fly the pod and keep from being killed by the awful little creature, Ralph crashes the pod into another arcade game, a Japanese racing game import called ‘Sugar Rush’ (Sort of a cross between ‘Mario Kart’ and Candyland), and loses his new medal to a feisty, somewhat bratty little girl named Vanellope Von Schweetz (Silverman). She is considered a bit of an outcast in her game due to the fact that she’s a “Glitch,†so she sometimes spazzes out in races and thus the game’s daffy but despotic ruler King Candy (Tudyk) never wants her to race. She’s still determined to enter and win a race, so she uses the medal she took from Ralph as an entry fee to get into the next race, right before the snotty rival racers in the game destroy her car. Vanellope makes Ralph an offer: If he helps her build a new car and win the race, she’ll give him back his medal (All the entry fees go into a pot that the winner receives).
In the midst of all this, though, troubles are arising in Ralph’s own game. Without Ralph around to start wrecking the building like he always does, the game appears to be malfunctioning, leading to the arcade’s owner Mr. Litwak (O’ Neill) thinking about unplugging and trashing the game. Fix- it Felix of course doesn’t want this to happen (When a game’s unplugged, those characters in it who make it out alive are basically homeless), so he teams up with Sgt. Calhoun, who was trying to track the Cy- Bug that got onto Ralph’s pod. The pair begin falling for each other as they set out to both bring Ralph home to stop the game from getting unplugged and also stop the rogue Cy- Bug from multiplying, destroying ‘Sugar Rush,’ and potentially destroying all the arcade’s other games as well.
As usual for my reviews, I’ll first talk about what I didn’t like about ‘Wreck- it Ralph.’ One of the things was how much time was spent in each of the games featured; We are only in ‘Hero’s Duty’ for about 10 minutes or so of the movie, while a ton of time is spent in ‘Sugar Rush.’ As a result of this, we barely see Dennis Haysbert’s character (A guy who’s I guess the general of the military forces and appears as a hologram to congratulate those who win the medal). For that matter, we also don’t see much of the arcade’s owner Mr. Litwak either. It would be interesting to see more of how he and the other real people in the arcade react to the weird things happening in the games. Another small problem is that I thought there was a little too much toilet humor in the movie. One last thing is, while a lot of the ads for ‘Wreck- it Ralph’ hype up the fact that a lot of actual video game characters appear in the film (More on that a little later in the review), most of those characters actually only make brief cameos in the film. I realize that copyrights and royalty fees and stuff probably prevented Disney from using the already- existing video game characters too much in the film (In fact, the classic gaming heroes Mario and Luigi don’t appear in the film at all, because Nintendo apparently was asking for more money to allow an appearance from them than Disney was willing to spend), but it’s still kind of misleading advertising.
All of that out of the way, I absolutely LOVED ‘Wreck- it Ralph’! It felt more like a Pixar film than a Disney film, in terms of its style (Take a seemingly quite simple and straightforward concept for a film and develop a surprisingly complex story from it, a la ‘The Incredibles,’ ‘Ratatouille,’ ‘WALL- E,’ and ‘Up’), and was actually in my opinion a great deal better than Pixar’s actual offering this year, the rather disappointing ‘Brave.’ As the examples of Rich Moore’s previous directorial works I cited in the beginning of the review show, he can make stories which are both incredibly funny and at times can really tug at your heart- strings in a good way, and he certainly does that with ‘Wreck it Ralph.’ Some parts of the movie had me laughing my butt off, while at least one part in it I’ll admit had me tear up a little bit. They also fit good amounts of action into the film, from the horrific battle in ‘Hero’s Duty,’ to the various races and car chases in ‘Sugar Rush,’ to a climactic fight scene that would make an awesome final boss fight in a ‘Wreck- it Ralph’ video game (A fact that the baddie in question notes as the fight begins). The plot is filled with interesting twists, as characters and scenario mentioned and forgotte early in the movie come back to have great importance later on in the story.The film also has great messages about the importance of being yourself, and trying to find ways that your supposed weaknesses can become strengths.
It’s clear that a LOT went into making the movie. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, from the character designs to the environments of the different games (‘Sugar Rush’ in particular had some beautiful designs for its various candy- based environments). It’s also incredibly impressive how many actual video game characters are fit into the game, even if it’s just cameos. We see characters from, among other games, ‘Super Mario,’ ‘Sonic the Hedgehog,’ ‘Street Fighter,’ ‘Mortal Kombat,’ and a whole host of retro arcade games like ‘Pac- Man,’ ‘Q*Bert’ and ‘Frogger.’ For those who we hear talk, they often got the same voice actors who played them in their respective games. The details that went into the movie provided lots of laughs, such as the fact that the Nicelanders (The people who live in the apartment building that Ralph is trying to wreck in his game) all have a hilariously clunky walking style, fitting of 8- bit characters like them.
Now, let’s talk about the characters. Ralph makes for a wonderful main character, he’s alternately short- tempered and aggressive, but then also at times soft- spoken and even gentle. For that, they couldn’t have found a better voice actor for him than John C. Reilly, as his expressive voice is very well- suited for both anger and yelling (i.e. He sounds awesome when barking out Ralph’s catchphrase from his game, “I’M GONNA WRECK IT!â€), and then also for talking softly and with heart. He helps make Ralph into a very well- developed character that you really want to see get ahead and finally earn a little respect.
The one character who really steals the show in ‘Wreck- it Ralph,’ though, is definitely Vanellope Von Schweetz. At times she’s annoying (Intentionally so), other times you just want to step into the movie and give her a hug. She and Ralph turn out to have a good deal in common, as they both know what it feels like to be outcasts hated by everyone in their respective games (Ralph for being a villain, Vanellope for being a glitch), so their growing friendship over the course of the film is very nice. I normally am NOT a fan of Sarah Silverman due to how crude and gutter- mouthed her comedy routines can be, but she was absolutely flawless at doing Vanellope’s voice. At times she sounds like a young child, other times like an adult, but always putting everything she has into it. Her performance is part of why Vanellope is a character with a lot of the funniest lines in the movie, but then also a lot of the most emotionally- moving scenes, as well. The twist regarding her at the ending proves to be great to see. Maybe if Sarah Silverman did more family- friendly fare like this in which she can show her talent without getting into the gutter, I might start to become more of a fan of hers.
As for the supporting cast, they’re all great. Fix- it Felix isn’t some egotistical self- absorbed jerk like you might think in a movie like this (Usually in movies in which we are meant to side with a supposed “Villain,†the supposed “Hero†is either a dim- witted egomaniac like in ‘Megamind’ or a complete brute like in ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing- Along Blog’), but instead sort of a sweetly- naïve, Jimmy Stewart- esque hero who likes the admiration he gets from the other people in his game, but then also is genuinely concerned for Ralph’s well- being, with Jack McBrayer doing a pretty good job with his voice.
Felix’s naivete is contrasted nicely with the tough- as- nails Sgt. Calhoun. Jane Lynch plays her on the one hand as a typical army badass (Her naturally rough- sounding voice fits the character like a glove), but then she also has a surprising amount of depth, as shown by her sad backstory. Seeing these two completely different video game heroes starting to bond with each other and even awkwardly fall in love is a lot of fun.
King Candy makes for a very interesting villain, cruel but also incredibly funny. It’s clear that the writers and animators who created him were heavily influenced by the Mad Hatter from Disney’s animated ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ both because he visually looks a lot like him, and because his voice (Masterfully done by Alan Tudyk, an actor that I’ve always liked a LOT, especially for playing the pilot Wash in ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity,’ I wouldn’t have even been able to tell it was him doing King Candy’s voice if I hadn’t known in advance) sounds like a cross between the Hatter and Roger Rabbit. He’s crazy and hilarious, but can have a definite mean streak at times. He, too, has a very interesting twist near the end of the film that I didn’t see coming. Plus, a scene when we first go to his castle has a funny- as- hell ‘Wizard of Oz’ nod.
‘Wreck- it Ralph’ also opens with a truly excellent, hand- drawn animated short called ‘Paperman’ that I could see easily winning next year’s Oscar for Best Animated Short, just as the film itself will almost certainly be at least nominated for Best Animated Feature Film.
So, there we have ‘Wreck- it Ralph,’ a great film perfect for Disney fans, Pixar fans, video game fans both old and new, and anyone else who just likes a nice, funny story about a likable oaf who discovers that ‘There’s no one I’d rather be than me.†By all means check it out. Come back next time for my next review!
