Let's Review: Wreck-It Ralph

Hello and welcome back to the Geekdom, I will be your Guide. I was really looking forward to this film….sort of. To understand my hesitation is to recognize that this isn’t a Pixar film. Disney hasn’t had the best track record for CGI films when they make them themselves.  This reputation would have kept me from this film except for one thing…..IT LOOKED SO COOL! How awesome is it to see all of these classic video game characters within the same film. So did my excitement beat my initial judgment? Let’s review Wreck-It Ralph.

The Negative

 

The issue with this film is that it is far too predictable. A Disney children’s film is never going to try anything truly drastic or new in this day and age. While the premise is a really neat idea the actually plot of the movie is nothing we haven’t seen before. We are presented most of the problems that will, rest assuredly, resolve itself by movie end. By this I mean, Ralph rather bluntly says why he is unhappy, and then resolves that problem. You can even tell who the main villain is from a mile away. I won’t say it ruined the film for me; it’s just that it was hard not to predict the outcome of the film after the initial 10 minutes.

There are multiple game worlds that Ralph enters in the movie. Most of the film is spent within the Sugar Rush world which is basically Mario Kart fused with Candy Land. The first 20 min of Sugar Rush is stuffed with candy puns. Some are good and some are bad, but it is just way too much. My friends would describe me as a lover of really bad puns, so when I say it has way too many puns, it really does.

This guy, Mayor Gene. Re-watch the scene where Ralph returns back to his game before the final act where he gets confronted with Mayor Gene. I honestly need someone to explain how in this scene Mayor Gene is in the right. If you cannot explain to me how Mayor Gene is right in this scene, then you should be just as confused as I was regarding the moral theme of this movie. I honestly just don’t get it.

The Positive

By the end of the film, I had to keep reminding myself that what I saw wasn’t a Pixar film, that what I saw was actually significantly better than the Pixar film, Brave, that was released in the same year. Wreck-It Ralph was an amazing film and I simply enjoyed every moment of it.

The humor in the film was a really key piece that kept the movie going for me. I may have complained about the puns in the candy section earlier, but that was just one segment of the film. The style of the humor and animation struck me as the kind you would see in a 16 bit parody video online. This sense of humor was very refreshing to see in a children’s film.

A difficulty found in most films is creating a new game that actually looks like a game. I’ve seen it before and you’ve seen it before. Anytime a character is sitting there and has to act like they are really engaged in the crappy CGI the effects team were able to whip up at the last second, it doesn’t look like any game anybody would be caught dead playing. Not only did this movie feature new games that actually looked like fun to play they also felt like games I had previously enjoyed. Sugar Rush in particular felt like a Mario Kart game with a candy theme. Watching the film, I really wanted to go home and play that race course on my game. This effect is what truly won me over toward the film. This really felt like a video game story with a truly ingrained video game atmosphere.

In Conclusion

This film really surprised me. I was expecting at least a watchable movie, but I hadn’t anticipated how much I would truly love this film. This film brought back a very nostalgic feeling for the gamer in me and I would love to see more films like these being produced by Disney. 4.2 out of 5.