Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Have I told you about my Disney animated collection? My goal is to collect all of Disney movies.  Mostly, it includes animations/classics but then I have a few that aren’t but I always enjoy it.  When I went to Burlington/Plattsburgh for Easter weekend, I managed to pick up a cheaper (than Montreal) copy of Wreck-It Ralph.  Finally, in the lineup of comedies, I chose this one to see!

Director: Rich Moore

Cast: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Mindy Kaling

Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the video game villain in the 30 year old arcade game Fix-It Felix Jr. After 30 years, he feels alone and rejected.  As Felix  has his hammer to fix everything and he’s the hero of the game, he always gets the medal.  After an encounter with the “good guys” in the game, he vows that he will get a medal to prove that he can hang out with them so they know that he isn’t a bad guy.  As he searches for a solution, he finds himself the opportunity to jump to another game, Hero’s Duty to get their Medal of Heroes.  Its there, things get a bit out of hand and he unleashes something and ends up accidentally bringing that into another game Sugar Rush.  Little did he know that he would end up with an annoying little girl called Vanellope who wants to race in the game but King Candy (Alan Tudyk) and the other racers will go to no ends to stop her from joining in.  In between all this, we get Hero’s Duty leader, Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) and Felix teaming up to bring Ralph back before their games are all affected and get unplugged forever.

“I’m bad, and that’s good. I will never be good, and that’s not bad. There’s no one I’d rather be than me.”

Wreck-It Ralph is very appealing.  It has a lot to offer and I loved the premise.  I love arcades and when you set it in an arcade scenario and manipulate the use of the setup there to make its own imaginative (but real) community, I found it completely ingenious.  The power bar was the central station of the games.  They had everything including a Bad-Anon group to give therapy to all the bad guys in the games because they are just normal characters who are playing a role to keep their game alive and plugged.  My boyfriend and I particularly loved it when they even inserted the Metal Gear Solid exclamation mark! We love that game to bits! Plus, Pacman, Sonic, Street Fighter, Bowser..its a gamer’s dream right there.

“Here you go, guys. Its fresh from Pac-man’s”

Other than having a great premise, this animated flick has some pretty awesome characters.  To start, we have Ralph.  He’s our protagonist, despite being a villain in his game.  All he wants is to not feel wanted and accepted for who he is and not his job per se.  He ends up overlooking the balance of things and he learns that being a hero means a whole lot more.  The responsibilities behind it and just simply what it means to be friends and to tell and analyze right and wrong and seeing the true nature of someone.  He’s big but he’s sweet and caring.  We can see that when he deals with the situation like with Vanellope.

“So…how’d I do?”

Vanellope is the cutest little girl ever! She’s annoying and all but she has her reasons for being the way she is.  At many times, this flick is about the developing friendship between her and Ralph.  They both start it off with manipulation to get something from one another and use each other’s skills to get to their end goal but it changes around.  The spark and the dialogue between them are just so fun and it made me fall in love with these two.

Sergeant Calhoun in Hero’s Duty

Being a sub storyline and supporting characters in this flick, Sergeant Calhoun is the one that packs in the intensity and has this type of sarcastic humor that only the awesome Jane Lynch can do.  Which is also why she is playing this hilarious role.  She has her own back story and the character’s tough gun-wielding gal matched up with peaceful and righteous hammer fixer-upper Felix to save Sugar Rush from its abomination.  Its a weird and awkward team but silly and crazy fun at the same time. 🙂

“It’s my job to fix whatever Ralph wrecks!”

This is getting a bit longer than I expected and I haven’t even gotten to King Candy.  This is a really fun animation.  I had to insert these quotes and it doesn’t really ruin the review.  Still spoiler-free, right? Its been a while that I’ve felt so young and absorbed into a more current animation.  I liked a lot of last year’s flicks, but this one really takes it.  There are a great amount of laughs and it pleases not only younger audience with the little girls and the easy dialogue, and has a light love story mixed with nothing really in the scary area, but at the same time, its fun for the adult audience thats been through gaming (like me) that grew up with Mario, Pac-Man, Sonic, etc.  I really had an awesome time with this one! I watched it again in the evening and I found it as great as it was on the first viewing 🙂

Do you have a favorite animated Disney flick (excluding Pixar)?