"Wreck-it Ralph takes delight in the early world of video games, offering many moments of mirth as the various video game landscapes look gorgeous in 3D."

3D Blu-ray Review

Title: Wreck-it Ralph

Director: Rich Moore

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

Length: 101 minutes

Studio: Disney/Pixar

Release Date: March 5, 2013

Reviewed by Sean Marchetto

I have to admit this movie is quite sad, my nine year old whispers as we sit down to begin Disney’s latest offering. It’s a fair warning. The movie opens with Wreck-it Ralph, the featured nemesis in the vintage arcade game, Fix-it Felix, on the verge of a mid-life crisis. With the thirtieth anniversary of Fix-it Felix drawing near, Ralph discovers that it is only Felix who is asked to celebrate the milestone and begins to consider a career change, musing to his fellow video-game villains that it’s “hard to love your job when no one likes you for doing it”.

Challenged by one of the citizens of Fix-it Felix to bring home his own hero’s medal in exchange for a penthouse suite in the hotel he’s daily charged with wrecking (and sentenced to live in the nearby garbage dump at game’s end), Ralph decides to abandon the world of his game, hitching a ride to the central electrical exchange, a kind of Grand Central Station that allows travel between games. He sneaks into the alien-bug infested world of Hero’s Duty, where he is able to claim a Hero’s Medal by ignoring some of the essential game mechanics, but in attempting to escape, he allows one of the game’s viruses to follow him into the nearby console of Sugar  Rush.

It is on the saccharine world of the candy cart racers that Ralph discovers that the very qualities that make him a villain in Fix-it Felix, can make him a hero somewhere else. Ralph makes friends with the equally ostracized Vanellope von Schweetz, a program glitch that is prevented from racing by the decree of the game’s ruler, King Candy. However, unbeknownst to all, the viruses from Hero’s Duty threaten to destroy everything before Vanellope and Ralph can make it onto the racetrack.

Although not as ambitious as Brave, Wreck-it Ralph takes delight in the early world of video games, offering many moments of mirth as the various video game landscapes look gorgeous in 3D. Nevertheless, my daughter was correct. Pixar is proving adept at creating characters with real emotional conflicts. Ralph’s existential angst easily rivals that of Russell from Up (although the movie is nowhere near Bambi-sad). John C. Reilly is lovable as Ralph, while Sarah Silverman is hilarious as Vanellope. However it is Alan Tudyk who steals every scene as King Candy, channelling Ed Wynn’s Mad Hatter.

Bonus Features:
Bit by Bit: Creating the Worlds of Wreck-It Ralph: behind the scenes look at the various inspirations for the different games, such as candy and the real world architecture of Spanish icon Gaudi, for the fantasyland of Sugar Rush.

Alternate and Deleted Scenes: not really much to offer, other than an early abortive plot line that would have seen Ralph land on The Sims.

Video Game Commercials: C’mon down to Litwak’s Arcade! Play Fix-it Felix with free quarters on your birthday! Proof of birthday required.

Paperman - the tender-hearted Academy-award winning romantic short about two strangers who meet one day on a train platform.