Wreck-It Ralph

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie

          I thought the premise of the movie sounded really cool.  Like anyone my age, I have a certain amount of nostalgia for videogames from the 1980s and 90s, and I’m a sucker for mixing my childhood nostalgia with metahumour or deconstructionist plot lines.  So the idea of taking characters from one video game genre and inserting them in a different video game genre sounded to me like it could really have potential. 

            Plus the previews for this movie looked really good.

            Plus this movie got a number of really good reviews.  (I was particularly impressed by the glowing review the AVClub gave this movie [LINK HERE].)

The Review

           After viewing this movie, I’m slightly disappointed.  It wasn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t a great movie either.

           

            Of course, it’s always dangerous watching a movie when you are not in the intended target audience.  So watching children’s movies as an adult can be hit and miss.  But sometimes - it - can - be-  really - enjoyable.  Sometimes the writers aim high, and I find the humor really funny and the storyline entertaining.

            Because this film was marketed as being based on old school video-game nostalgia, I half thought the writers would aim for some humor that would engage an older audience.  But I was disappointed in that regard.  The writers aim low, and the humor is squarely aimed at children.  Example:

            “Markowski!  What’s the first rule of Hero’s Duty?”

            “Um…No cuts, no buts, no coconuts?”

            Well, I can’t knock it too much.  I also would have found that hilarious when I was 5.

            Or another example:

            “What’s that?  I didn’t hear you.  Your breath was so bad it made my ears numb.”

            Basically, it’s all like that folks.  If you have kids, great, bring them along to this movie.  But if you’re a single guy in your 30s, there’s no reason why you need to go out of your way to see this.

The Plot

          Okay, so here’s what I think is the central conceit of this movie:  the video game characters are just like actors.  The bad guys aren’t really “bad”, they just pretend to be bad when people are playing the game, much like stage actors at a play.  Once the arcade closes for the day and the actors are off the clock, then all the video game characters, good and bad, just act like normal people.

            Did I get that right?  Is that what’s really going on here?  I ask, because to me the whole central premise of this game seems incredibly inconsistent.  In some scenes, it appears that everyone knows that Wreck-it Ralph is just an actor with a part to play.  In other scenes (like when other video game characters are fleeing in terror before him at the Central Station) it appears that not everyone is in on the concept.

            Even for the good-guys, it is never clear if they really are the characters they play in their video game, or if they are just acting.  For instance Sergeant Calhoun from Hero’s Duty has a tragic backstory pre-programmed into her role in the video game, which haunts her despite the fact that she, like all the other characters, appear fully aware that it is all just a game and she is just acting a role, and that none of that had ever really happened.

            And, if everyone knows everyone else is just a stage actor for a job, then what is this bizarre discrimination that Ralph and some of the other bad-guy characters seem to face?  I couldn’t understand where all the hostility was coming from during the confrontation scene between Ralph and citizens of Nicetown. 

           I know it’s a children’s movie, but some understandable motivation for the characters would have been nice.

            Am I over-thinking all this?  I did feel like all these things nagged at my brain while I watched the movie, and kept me from getting fully into it.  If the plot had been a little bit better, or the gags a little bit funnier, I suppose I wouldn’t have minded so much. But because the movie really starts to drag in the middle, I had plenty of time to over-think the plot inconsistencies.

            The beginning of the movie is alright.  I liked the basic concept, and I liked all the references to nostalgic video games.

            However once Wreck-It Ralph ends up in Sugar Rush land the movie becomes a lot more boring and conventional.  At this point, the movie stops being about Wreck-it Ralph, and instead revolves entirely around Vanellope, who is a clichéd anime female character, and entirely much too cutesy and sappy.  For me, all of her scenes, which were intended to draw humor from how cutesy she was, just fell completely flat.

            As for the other characters running around this movie:

            Sergeant Calhoun is played by Jane Lynch, otherwise known as coach Sue Sylvester from Glee.  In my opinion, she’s miscast in the role, because her voice is so distinctive that it’s impossible not to think of coach Sylvester whenever Sergeant Calhoun speaks.  It pulled me right out of the movie every time she opened her mouth. 

            There’s also a romance going on between her and Fix-it Felix, which happens for no reason, and feels incredibly contrived.  The writers were obviously counting on the fact that the audience would just accept that these two fall in love without asking any questions about why.

Final Verdict

          Not a horrible movie.  A pleasant enough waste of time if you’ve got 2 hours to kill, but no reason why you should go out of your way to see this.

Notes (SPOILER WARNING)

* I know it’s cheating to use someone else’s writing as a substitute for my own thoughts, but the review of this movie in The Atlantic [LINK HERE] pretty much captures exactly what I think about this movie. 

            I part company from The Atlantic reviewer on one issue only—I didn’t mind all the cameos and video game references.  In fact that was the part of the movie I enjoyed.

* Speaking of video game cameos, there are a few scenes in central station that are so chalked full of familiar video game characters that I had a hard time catching them all on my small screen.

            I know I’m giving this movie a mixed review, but if you decide you are going to see it anyway, it’s probably better to see it on the big screen than the small screen.

* So, how is it that Turbo is the only character who can access the video game code? 

* And on a related note, Sour Bill at one point says of Turbo, “He’ll do anything to keep her from racing because if she crosses the finish-line the game will reset and she won’t be a glitch anymore.”

            This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, and it’s never explained why the game will reset if she crosses the finish line.  But okay, it’s a kid’s fantasy movie, and part of the genre is that they get to make up the rules as they go along.

            The thing that bugs me is that they didn’t even stick to this.  Although she had learned to control it, she did still glitch even after the game reset.

* While watching the end credits to this movie, I was pleasantly surprised to hear part of the movie soundtrack recorded in Japanese.

The Japanese group who recorded the song is the all girl Japanese teeny bopper band AKB48, who, as it happens, were just recently in the news a couple months ago.  (Did anyone else see this?).  One of the members of the band, a 20 year old woman, was publically shamed in the Japanese media and she shaved her head in repentance.  Her crime?  It turns out she had a boyfriend, which was in violation of the band’s code.  [LINK HERE]

Link of the Day

Violence and Dignity–Reflections on the Middle East

Wreck-It Ralph: Movie Review (based on an old blog post)