Marval Movie

"Video Games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the serious strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control."

-Roger Ebert 

Wreck-it Ralph is Disney's go at making a story with Video Games as their backdrop. Video Games have become the new big business art-form of the last thirty years with the really big new games bringing in higher money than the big movie releases, the technology and storytelling depth has grown more and more sophisticated. However, I have always felt that Disney is really good at being long lasting but really, REALLY bad at being contemporary.

Wreck-It Ralph is the story about a bad guy in an old video arcade that has lasted the test of time for thirty years. The name of the game is "Fix-It Felix Jr." where the setup is kind of Donkey Kong-like where Ralph (John C. Riley) wrecks a building and Felix fixes it up, it looks like fun. But the years of under-appreciation have taken their toll on Ralph and he wants some of the love that comes with being a hero, the only duduk perkara is he's the villain. So Ralph leaves his own game to see how well he fares in other games.

The formula of this movie is Tron meets Nightmare Before Christmas and a few drops of Toy Story in there. Those are some of the most widely liked movies of all time and you'd expect this movie to be the same, well unlike those movies only time will tell that for certain but this movie is very likable, from head to toe.

I would not qualify myself as a gamer. Ow, I have games, I play games but they don't take up the majority of my time nor do they take up the majority of my thinking time. I usually just have one game that I play the hell out of for a few weeks straight, and then tuck it away for a while. But at the same time, I am not a layman to the medium and I got all the in-jokes they were doing in the movie.

Disney is, of course, one of the greatest giants in the world of animation in both traditional 2D and 3D animation. Wreck-It Ralph is exactly what you'd expect with top notch animation with bright colors. I appreciate most the unique animation that each character in each Video Games have, the people in Ralph's game are from the older days so they move very stiff with quick transfers between motions. The people from Sugar Rush are more fluid and expressive. This is a marvel of the not only a certain type of animation but the blend of all kinds of different animation blended beautifully together. The game companies took great care that their characters would not be miss-represented in the movie, so much so that they had their people working side by side with the Disney people so that their characters moved just right. They even took the care to make sure that Bowser held his cup correctly.

When I saw Grace Randolph's review of Wreck-It Ralph she said that you have to bring candy to the movie because of the Sugar Rush scenes in the film and they just make you really want candy. So I headed her advice and I went in with a little cup of Pick-an mix and this was the way to go because looking at Sugar Rush with its vivid colors and incredible texture on all the different candy I was very grateful to have some candy at the ready.

I love the supporting cast, first of all, there's Sarah Silverman as Vanellope a glitch that exists in Sugar Rush and is flat out adorable and hilarious. Jane Lynch as Sergent Calhorn the lead character from Hero's Duty (a Halo parody), as a tough as nails, no-nonsense cynical action hero. I love Jane Lynch as Sue Silvester from Glee and whoever loves her in that will love her in this, true shes just doing the same thing but its the old method of if it ain't broke don't fix it, plus she gets to say things that Sue would never get to say. Alan Tudyk as King Candy who seems to be channeling Ed Wynn which leads to an incredibly nostalgic performance.

I rarely go and see movies in 3D and this was no exception. I only go and see a movie if I hear that the 3D was something that the creators thought about from the beginning and it was on their minds through the production of the movie, I didn't hear anything like that for this movie so I didn't. The movie in 2D is perfectly fine with crisp clear images and engaging enough action scenes without having to have things thrown in your face.

Wreck-it Ralph could have gone very wrong but thank goodness it went very right, this is exactly the kind of movie that is advertised in its trailers. A fun movie with lots of comedy, great visuals, clever writing, jokes and memorable characters. Go to this movie if you are a gamer or not a gamer if you are young or old and you will have a fun time.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Paperman Review
Accompanying Wreck-It Ralph is a little short film (much like Pixar do). Paperman is gorgeous and stylish. I love it for many reasons but mostly because it does what I consider to be great animation, making the characters seem alive. When you look into the expressions and the body language you can see the gears turning inside their heads and can believe that there's a brain behind there.

Paperman is a great short that might even outlive Wreck-It Ralph itself.