If you’ve read any of my previous entries, you probably know I love video games. Maybe not every video game – but a lot of them, and I have a special love for the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
It’s the main thing that put me in a theater seat back in 2014 when Wreck-It Ralph debuted, but if that was all this movie had going for it, I would have watched it once and forgotten about it completely. Instead, this is one of my favorite Disney movies, for reasons that have nothing to do with the (admittedly delightful) video game cameos throughout.
I was in college when this movie was new, and my friends and I made a point to see it together. We tried to do the same for the sequel a couple years ago, but it didn’t work out the way we wanted it to. Still, this movie is wrapped in memories of a pretty great time for me, and for all of us, so you should know there’s some bias going into this one.
- This might be my favorite John C. Reilly movie.
- “This animation is so real!” about an 8-bit arcade game.
- I love that they got permission to use so many actual games, instead of just referencing generic things like genres and tropes.
- “Zangief, you are bad guy. But this does not mean you are bad guy.” One of my favorite lines in this movie.
- I love the idea of a villain support group. And it really helps to set up the theme that, even though the apartment residents don’t hate Ralph and generally aren’t malicious toward him, their behavior is still a problem.
- Sad Q-Bert always gets me. Nobody wants to talk about Q-Bert anymore.
- Come to think of it, most of the game characters are sad in this movie.
- I love how the characters from the 8-bit game move like they’re still pixelated.
- Something is lost when we move into generic games. I know people hate product placement, but it’s much more fun when the games being referenced aren’t just tropes, like I said before.
- Jane Lynch is wonderful as always.
- Characters speaking gibberish languages is a favorite gag of mine. Felix speaking Q-Bert is hilarious.
- Felix falling hard for the soldier is great too. Felix is really funny in general.
- Vanellope is adorable – and I’m just noticing she’s got some of the same smart-yet-immature energy as Lilo.
- The Oreo guards’ chant is somehow really catchy.
- Uncovering the story of Turbo is one of my favorite parts of this movie.
- Vanellope loving the mistake kart is a sweet scene.
- “I’m bad, and that’s good. I’m good and that’s not bad. There’s no one I’d rather be than me.”
- Maybe my biggest complaint about this movie is the early-2010s pop songs.
One of my earliest impressions of this movie (and of the sequel – but I’ll get to that in a future post) is that a lot of its charm rides on theming and a cute friendship between its main characters rather than conventional humor. There’s still plenty of the latter, but to me it’s not as funny as a lot of other Disney movies, and it can feel underwritten at times because of this.
Like most Disney movies, the plot isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. Ralph feels unappreciated at home, so he sets out to make something of himself, mistakenly believing that if he climbs that ladder high enough, he’ll eventually earn friendship and acceptance. Along the way, he meets Vanellope, who shows him that our flaws are an important part of us and you don’t have to earn respect from those who actually care about you. The movie’s lack of originality doesn’t make this a bad story – far from it – but it also doesn’t serve as a cover for the fact that the humor department is similarly lacking.
Wreck-It Ralph is a great movie, and it’ll always be one of my favorites for personal reasons. Zangief’s line at the beginning will forever be quoted in my friend group and in many others. But watching it again has reminded me that it doesn’t quite have the spark that made me fall immediately in love with movies like The Lion King or Lilo & Stitch. The video game setting is novel, but it’s an unconventional theme wrapped around a very standard movie, and I think it needed to get a little crazier (or funnier) to be truly stellar.
I think this one belongs between The Princess and the Frog and Lady and the Tramp. While I like Ralph and Vanellope more than the characters in either of those two movies, the latter uses its theming in a much more effective way and is truly a love letter to dogs. Wreck-It Ralph, by comparison, doesn’t feel like a movie about video games so much as a movie that happens to be set in a video game – and Vanellope’s racing game kiiiiind of feels like an excuse for the writers to stop thinking about the medium and start throwing in completely unrelated references to candies and sweets.
Next up is Frozen, a movie I feel is unfairly maligned due to how prevalent it was (and is) in Disney’s marketing.
The Ranking
- The Lion King
- Lilo & Stitch
- Beauty and the Beast
- Tangled
- The Little Mermaid
- One Hundred and One Dalmatians
- Sleeping Beauty
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
- The Emperor’s New Groove
- Mulan
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
- Lady and the Tramp
- Wreck-It Ralph
- The Princess and the Frog
- Hercules
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Aladdin
- The Jungle Book
- Cinderella
- Fantasia
- Bolt
- The Great Mouse Detective
- Saludos Amigos
- Bambi
- The Three Caballeros
- Treasure Planet
- The Black Cauldron
- Chicken Little
- Winnie the Pooh (2011)
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire
- Tarzan
- Fantasia 2000
- Dinosaur
- Robin Hood
- Oliver & Company
- Pocahontas
- The Rescuers
- The Aristocats
- Home on the Range
- Melody Time
- Pinocchio
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- Make Mine Music
- Peter Pan
- Alice in Wonderland
- The Fox and the Hound
- The Rescuers Down Under
- Dumbo
- The Sword in the Stone
- Meet the Robinsons
- Fun and Fancy Free
- Brother Bear
Mister Binger 