Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Wreck-It Ralph

Director:  Rich Moore

Voice Cast:  John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch


I grew up with Nintendo in the late 80s and worked with family and friends to defeat Bowser in the Super Mario Brothers series.  Never once did I consider how Bowser must have felt about being the bad guy, or how Zangief felt about being battled repeatedly in Street Fighter 2.  Wreck-It Ralph digs into this issue from the perspective of Ralph (Reilly), the destructive giant in the fictional video game Fix-It Felix.  Ralph's job is to destroy a building so that an arcade player can use Felix (McBrayer) to fix up the damage.   After 30 years, Ralph is tired of living in a garbage dump and shunned while Felix is treated like royalty by the building's tenants after the game shuts down for the day, so he seeks to become a hero and decides to jump games. 

Wreck-It Ralph is a fun movie to watch, especially for gamers of the Nintendo generation.  It's most fun when it follows Ralph through the different games and as he hops between games through an imaginative arcade behind-the-scenes system.  The voice cast is very funny as well; McBrayer uses his Kenneth vocabulary to make Felix particularly amusing, and Jane Lynch's Calhoun (an action-hero character) is sharp-tongued but also has the saddest backstory in her game. 

I liked that Wreck-It Ralph makes the point that realizing who you are and not changing that is the best way to go.  What prevents the film from being great is the sub-plot involving Vanellope, a girl that Ralph meets when he jumps into Sugar Rush (a racing game). King Candy wants to prevent her from racing because she's a glitch in the system, and a glitch might keep players from playing Sugar Rush and get the game shut down for good.  This subplot bogs the film down a bit, but overall it's a fun and imaginative experience.

Be sure to catch the short before the film- it's quite beautiful.