The Missus and her Little Sis from Big Brothers/Big Sisters were due to have a fun day yesterday so I tagged along as they went up to Cedar Rapids to eat some lunch at the New Bo City Market and then up to the Collins Road Theatres to catch the afternoon matinee of Wreck-It Ralph.
I had wanted to see this movie ever since it came out having heard plenty of good things about it and I'm pleased to announce that it didn't disappoint and it went one step further- it might be one of the best video game movies ever made. The genre- or I guess, sub-genre of the video game movie is one replete with corny goodness (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat) and the occasional awful turd (Super Mario Brothers) but no actual solid, good movies that really capture the essence of a game. Scott Pilgrim vs The World comes close, but that's less a movie about video games and more of a 'life as a video game' metaphor for teenage angst.
Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the titular character and bad guy of the arcade game 'Wreck-It Ralph' which has long been a mainstay at Litvak's Arcade. When the arcade closes for the night, the characters can travel freely via rail to other games via the 'Game Central Station' (the rails are power cords and the 'Game Central Station' is the power strip they all plug into.) and we first meet Ralph at a support group for bad guys and he's starting to chafe in his assigned role. He wants to be a good guy for once and wants a little more than a life of wrecking things and an uncomfortable home in his game's dump. (The support group is a who's who of classic video game villains from a Pac-Man ghost to Zangief and M. Bison from Street Fighter- both of whom hilariously contribute to the discussion.)
When he returns home after group and finds the other characters celebrating the game's 30th Anniversary without him (he wasn't even invited) Ralph gets mad and vows to return with his very own medal or not at all. At Tapper's (another game- that doubles as a bar) the bartender, Tapper lets slip that he can win a medal in the first person shooter game Hero's Duty- so Ralph sneaks aboard and prepares to fight the evil Cy-Bugs udner the command of Sergeant Calhoun (a rough and tough talking Jane Lynch). Sure enough, Ralph makes a mess of things but soon is flying out of Hero's Duty with his medal before getting lost in the kart racing game, Sugar Rush where he makes the acquaintance of Vanellope Von Sweetz (Sarah Silverman), a glitchy character that's desperate to try and be a racer.
Little does Ralph know, but in his absence, his game is threatened with unplugging and the hero, Fix It Felix (Jack McBrayer) has set off to find Ralph and bring him back home. And as Ralph and Vanellope become friends and try and get her into the racing line-up, despite her glitch the Cy-Bug that Ralph inadvertantly brought with him into Sugar Rush may pose a bigger threat to all the games and give Ralph a chance to be a hero after all.
(And no, I'm not going to spoil the ending.) I loved this movie- it's a perfect kids movie but it's also a sly and somewhat subversive homage to arcade games- and it's actually kind of amazing to me Disney managed to get it's ducks in a row and get so many video game characters to appear in this movie at all. The Street Fighter characters were especially funny and anyone who spent any time at all in an arcade will have a lot of fun trying to spot all the different characters that make appearances in the film. If it's possible to imagine what life would be like inside an old school arcade game, Wreck-It Ralph nails it on the head. (Even the smashed cake at the party Ralph crashes splatters in 8-bit graphics-- a nice touch.) And the underlying themes of wanting more and wanting to grow beyond your regular hum-drum existence are universal in nature. Everybody wants a little more for themselves from time to time- especially if they get stuck in a rut like Ralph was.
Overall: A brilliant movie and an excellent way to wile away and afternoon. Another one for the Amazon.com wishlist... I can give this **** out of **** without any hesitation.
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