...Where was I?
Pixar, that was it. I always thought they got off to a blinding start with the original Toy Story, which was a rather charming parable about the male midlife crisis disguised as a colourful, funny kid-flick. The sequel dumbed things down a little, but hey, so long as they had the little green squeezy aliens I wasn't about to complain. For the most part, though, I tend to feel that their output amounts to the emperor pretending to don suit after suit of nonexistent finery.
Take A Bug's Life, for instance, populated by hordes of 4-legged ants - I'm not suggesting that absolute realism would have been the best path to take, but doesn't there have to come a point where basic anatomical structures get factored in somewhere? Bolt was one of their better titles, to my mind, but giving him an extra couple of legs would definitely have ruined it for me. There's been cute-but-saccharine nonsense like Finding Nemo and Wall E, and while I've never watched any of the Cars films I don't have any particular compunction about dismissing them out of hand.
Every so often, though? Yeah, they hit the sweet spot and come up with something warm and imaginative and ever-so-slightly batshit insane. Something like Monsters Inc, which compensates for its sentiment with endless brave inventiveness and actually earns any tears it presses you into shedding.
None of this, however, is relevant to the matter in hand, given that Wreck-It Ralph is not, in fact, a Pixar movie, as I just found out 45 seconds ago. Oops. It's apparently genuine Disney as opposed to merely being owned by Disney, this second category encompassing approximately 99% of movies I pretend are beneath me despite them being the only films I ever bother to see at the cinema.
It's an easy mistake to make, though, given that the subject material and prevailing sentiment is textbook Pixar - the only difference is that Ralph doesn't anthropomorphise something incapable of talking or even completely inanimate, but something that doesn't, in the strictly tangible sense, even exist. Welcome to a world where classic arcade game characters are merely actors, and their big box machines are just a stage.
Our hero, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly), has been around a long time. His game, Fix-It Felix Jnr, is on the verge of celebrating its 30th birthday and is still perversely successful, having seen off wave after wave of competition like so many downward-scrolling space invaders. Ralph doesn't mind that it's not his name on the box - he's the villain, after all, and Felix (Jack McBrayer) is a genuinely nice guy. It does smart a little, however, when he's not invited to the anniversary celebrations. When he accidentally finds out about a party to which he hasn't been invited, he stops by to check there hasn't been some mistake. Ralph is a wrecker by nature, though - a big, clumsy creature with hands like giant hams, and where he goes, destruction inevitably follows.
Ostracised by the rest of the game's NPCs, Ralph starts searching for a medal - one that he's been maliciously misinformed will win him a party and plaudits all of his own. He finds one soon enough in first-person shooter Hero's Duty, but as always, his clumsiness gets him into trouble and soon he's fleeing in a stolen spaceship, with tough-as-nails Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) in hot pursuit. He lands up crashing into confectionery-themed karting title Sugar Rush, where he runs into Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), a snarky, sarky brat with troubles of her own. Back in Fix-It Felix, however, all is far from rosy - the game is out of commission, and if it remains that way too long the arcade owner will surely pull the plug, condemning its characters to lives sleeping rough in the subway like poor Qbert and his various antagonists.
The good
Honestly, I was kind of sold on this one from the moment I read the cast list, with the four key roles being occupied by four of my favourite actors. Nobody plays the put-upon everyman quite like Reilly, who manages to reuse the same basic persona in films from this one to We Need to Talk about Kevin without it ever seeming shoehorned in. I fell in love with Calhoun, as well, not only because she sounded like Jane Lynch but also because she looked a little like her. All four of the main protagonists are basically recognisable, in fact, although Sarah Silverman and Jack McBrayer may not have such familiar faces to mainstream audiences. Mr. Beaupepys thinks this film wastes Silverman by ignoring her natural talent for utter filth, and while I can understand the necessity, I do sort of agree.Visually, it's more or less what you'd expect - something to worsen a migraine, or possibly induce one. The colours are hypersaturated and sharp, yes, but mostly they're just abundant. Where the film really succeeds, however, is in creating video game environments that aren't only believable but actually desirable, from Felix' retro shenanigans to the foreboding blacks and greens of Hero's Duty. Best of all, however, is Sugar Rush, crammed as it is with all those cute little tricks and details that make the likes of Mario Kart so utterly irresistible.
It's nice to see a film where the phrase something for the dads can be used so accurately and yet so innocently, and I feel that Ralph has true cross-generational appeal. Ralph himself is occasionally paternal towards the tiny Vanellope, true, but I found myself mostly identifying with him as a big awkward kid who couldn't be anywhere without feeling fundamentally in the way. The female characters, meanwhile, are proactive and strongly painted, with full agency within the stories of which they are a part.
The bad
I'm not saying this necessarily had the potential to be one of the greats, but I think that but for the product placement it could probably have been one of the very very goods. I'm not talking about the proprietary games, which I feel were essential to the authenticity of the piece, but a two second shot of a Subway-branded paper cup or a song whose entire lyrics consisted of a repetition of the word Oreo? Maaaybe not so much. It struck a sour note in a film whose messages were otherwise so positive.Oh, and a quick word of warning: hand on heart, I swear that if I'd seen this as a kid, parts of it would have been too pants-wettingly terrifying for me to be able to see it as an adult. I was a wuss; your kids may be made of sterner stuff. If they're not, though, be advised that the eventual villain of the piece is creepy bordering on flat-out disturbing.
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