Let’s talk straight here: a lot of kid’s movies are about learning who you are and what you want to do with that. They use a variety of plot devices, narratives, foils, characters, and shiny animation techniques to teach the children all the lessons about growing up, developing your personality, and being a good person.
This is basically a long way of saying: ignore the critics that are saying “Wreck-it Ralph” is some stale incarnation of these things. Spoiler alert: it’s all the same lesson. This movie just does it with enough young pizzazz that it takes you for a ride along the way.
The titular character, Wreck-it Ralph (John C. Reilly, Step Brothers, Magnolia), has been working inside a videogame as a villain for years. It’s not his fault, he’s coded that way! But Ralph has enough of it, setting off to different games to prove himself a hero and win a shiny medal. Along the way he inadvertently cross contaminates the games and threatens the livelihood of his friends and the arcade games they live in.
There is certainly a lot going on in this movie. There’s dangers to the integrated world of video gaming; Ralph gets sidetracked helping a girl in the racing game Sugar Rush; his protagonist counterpart, Fix-it Felix (the goofy Jack McBrayer from 30 Rock) goes searching for him with the tough-as-nails Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch, from Glee, Best in Show, as herself) from the first-person shooter game he steals the medal from; and not all is as sweet as it seems in the Sugar Rush kingdom….So yeah there’s a lot of story. Granted the first 30 minute are not promising and of course along the way we encounter different examples of what it means to really fit into your environment.
But what the movie does so well is not letting itself get too bogged down by it all. It’s not hokey or preachy, rambling or lost, it is a clever mash-up of video games and kid’s movies; and it does that with style. But what many critics are seeing as a flaw I see as a well executed adventure ensemble. The audience now has so many more characters and narratives, and since “Wreck-it” more than manages it, the result is visual feast.
The graphics are superb (as is to be expected from a modern kids movie); and the thought behind the style of each game world (and the game train station they travel through) is clearly meticulously thought out. This movie dazzles and delights, and with so many positives it’s easy to just push start.
Proportionally sized review about pre-movie short “Paperman”: Implausible, beautiful, and adorable, “Paperman” is an impressive update to 2D animation that tells a sweet love story. It’s pretty cute, and should be gracing the youtube virals in no time.
Pulp Diction 