So, Wreck-It Ralph did pretty well, as you may have heard, landing almost $50 million this weekend.
It’s an odd duck of a movie, to some degree. Calling it the best movie about video games is actually an insult in the sense that it’s pretty much the only (fictional) movie about video games worth watching, unless you have a serious blind spot for The Wizard.
It’s also a pretty good movie, in the sense that it’s funny and engaging, and old-school gamers will enjoy the dozens of gags about classic arcade and console games, although for copyright reasons it’s largely parodies instead of the real thing.
But that said, it’s very much a Disney movie, with all of the baggage that implies. It could have been more, and instead, quite consciously, chose to be “good enough.”
Wreck-It Ralph has been drawing unfair comparisons to both Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Toy Story, and it’s not trying to be either. It’s essentially your typical Disney narrative set in an arcade fantasyland instead of a fairy-tale one, complete with an unjustly displaced royal and a lowly misfit hero nobody appreciates. It just also has the problems of this stock setting and it’s a little baffling that nobody bothered to fix the problems in the script.
The movie actually does a pretty good job of establishing why everybody thinks Ralph is a tool; he’s got anger issues and he’s clumsy, so he often comes off as a rage case even when he’s just confused. That said, the script leans a little too hard on Ralph being a bumpkin to drive the plot. Similarly, the movie never makes a good argument for why Ralph shouldn’t just leave the fat complacent douchebags who treated him like dirt for thirty years to their fate. Yeah, Ralph is such a terrible person for wanting to be treated with some basic decency. Shame on him.
On a far less overthought note, the product placement is egregious. The Sugar Rush arcade game crams just about every possible type of candy into its scenes, to the point where the plot actually hinges on Mentos to some degree.
All that said, it’s by no means a bad movie. It’s cute, the jokes range from the entertainingly goofy to the unexpectedly clever, and the voice cast does a uniformly superb job. It’s just, unlike its hero, lacking in ambition.
What’d you think? Let us know in the comments.
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I thought it was a cute film. It hit the right notes and was a great afternoon at the movies. Children loved it, parents enjoyed the nostalgic jokes, and pastry puns. It was not ambitious, but not every film MUST be citizen kane. Or Citizen CANDYkane in this case.
Are we not counting Scott Pilgrim as a movie about games?
I’d say it’s a movie fluent in the language of games, but it’s not exclusively about them.
The “hit a guy with glasses” joke slayed me. And the short that played before the movie was achingly gorgeous.
Short was indeed amazing. And I did appreciate a lot of the reference-jokes, from the Konami code, to the subtle, like having Kano rip the zombie’s heart out in the meeting.
I think some people are expecting too much from what is essentially a Disney cartoon. I’m not sure what the expectations re: ambition were. When you have too much ambition and you flub the execution, you end up with Brave. In that sense Disney Animation destroyed Pixar this year.
I found Wreck-It Ralph to be delightful. Yeah, I’m a 41 year-old dude and I just used the word ‘delightful’. I appreciated the in jokes about videogames and whatnot but was pleasantly surprised that the script was well-written and focused on the relationships between characters. It didn’t rely on that schtick *too* much. I was glad it didn’t devolve into a stream of callbacks to 80′s and 90′s videogames. I cared about Ralph and Vanellope. I was emotionally devastated at one point (won’t specify) even though I knew this was Disney and it would all turn out. They did a great job setting things up to pay off later.
Plus, I would argue that it was somewhat ambitious. The various animation styles/worlds and switching back and forth is not easy. I thought the modern first person world was starkly beautiful and the detail in the train station was almost too much to take in.
The plot was also more complex than people give it credit for. Think about the main premise set up at the stat of the movie and compare to how it ended. I thought there were clever twists and turns in between that kept the narrative going and kept it interesting.
Sure, it’s Disney, it’s about relationships and redeption, etc. etc. Nothing new there but it all worked. I guess I’m a sucker.
I feel like in this case, the things that bugged you were non-factors for me.
I thought they covered pretty well why Ralph couldn’t just leave the people who weren’t treating him well – or, as they referred to it over and over in the movie, “Go Turbo.”
And yes, the Mentos product placement was strong in the one location of the movie, but it felt more based on a “thing” that has been extremely popular on the internet than on a desire to cash in from the Mentos people. (Though maybe they did.) And to be honest, I’m not sure that I even noticed the brand names on the other candies.
And I agree with Mattyj about the ambition as far as creating a movie that had so many distinct animation styles within it, from Ralph’s home game (and I love the way that the people from his 16-bit game moved, complete with only making 90 degree turns) to the train station, to Hero’s Duty, to Sugar Rush, to brief forays into the “real world.” And having all of those things interact together.
Overall, this was a fun movie that, you are right, was really in the Disney mold. Although, to their credit, the female characters weren’t waiting for someone to save them in this one. They two main ones were both pretty kick ass in their own right.
Also, I feel like you missed the point with your comment, “Yeah, Ralph is such a terrible person for wanting to be treated with some basic decency. Shame on him.” That’s the whole point. To these people, he’s the guy who tears their homes down several times a day – he is “the bad guy.” However, it’s when we see Ralph interact with other characters who don’t know that about him, who judge him based on who he is, and not his function in :life,” we see him making friends easily, and doing good things for others. There was be a moral in there about seeking to understand the motivations of others before assuming they are bad/evil.
Also, the “why do I have to fix everything I touch,” made me laugh out loud.
I enjoyed it for what it was, that being said it was far from a great film. Great intro to some interesting characters that will hopefully be better utilized in the inevitable sequel. Coulda been like Roger Rabbit, ended up more like a low rent Shrek taking place in videogames instead of fairy tales.
Was anyone else sad that the Candy King voice was meant to be Ed Wynn. Made me miss the guy.