Wreck-It Ralph

Remem­ber the open­ing cred­its of Scott Pil­grim Vs. The World, specif­i­cal­ly the 8‑bit remix of the Uni­ver­sal theme right at the top of the film? Well, judg­ing by the first few moments of Wreck-It Ralph, so does some­one over at Dis­ney: the film employs the exact same con­cept for their own heav­i­ly pix­e­lat­ed intro sequence.

It’s a cute, suit­ably retro touch, albeit one that expos­es Wreck-It Ralph’s most con­spic­u­ous flaw. Sure, direc­tor Rich Moore’s wonky ani­mat­ed pas­tiche throws togeth­er ele­ments of Toy Sto­ry, Mon­sters, Inc. and Who Framed Roger Rab­bit, then piles on the clas­sic videogame ref­er­ences faster than Son­ic the Hedge­hog – the spiky blue Sega vet­er­an who gets a suit­ably fleet­ing cameo appear­ance ear­ly on. But by shame­less­ly riff­ing on oth­er sources, Wreck-It Ralph strug­gles to estab­lish its own identity.

The sto­ry focus­es on John C Reilly’s lacon­ic Ralph, a ​‘bad guy’ char­ac­ter in an old-fash­ioned, Don­key Kong-style plat­form game called Fix-It Felix. Tired of play­ing the vil­lain, Ralph sets out on a per­ilous mis­sion that he hopes will earn him the respect of his peers. Alas, none of it makes any sense.

The world of Wreck-It Ralph demands we accept that gam­ing char­ac­ters are liv­ing, breath­ing crea­tures who inhab­it con­soles and trav­el in and out of each oth­ers’ games via the cables and plug sock­ets of the arcade. Sad­ly, no fur­ther thought has been put into the log­ic of how such a uni­verse would function.

For instance, the biggest threat to the entire cast of char­ac­ters is the prospect of their own machine being tak­en out of ser­vice. This, it is ham­mered home through­out the film, is essen­tial­ly the same as death. And yet no one seems wor­ried about the prospect of a pow­er cut or some oth­er apoc­a­lyp­tic event such as (the hor­ror!) some­one switch­ing the plugs off.

Sure­ly the arcade own­er and soft­ware design­ers should be in cahoots with Ralph and his col­leagues for such an elab­o­rate infra­struc­ture to oper­ate? And what pur­pose does their slav­ery to elec­tron­ic enter­tain­ment serve any­way? None of this is addressed, as Wreck-It Ralph takes one hell of a basic con­cept and runs it into the ground by reduc­ing the core sto­ry to a crass, mild­ly depress­ing moral­i­ty tale about being grate­ful with what­ev­er ter­ri­ble cards you’re dealt in life.

This cyn­i­cism per­vades through­out: a good chunk of the action takes place inside a videogame called Sug­ar Rush, a sort of Mario Kart clone set in a very fluffy, very pink world of sug­ar moun­tains and can­dy canes. Sad­ly, it’s just a handy plat­form for some hard­core prod­uct place­ment, includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­ble­some endorse­ment for Men­tos and Coca-Cola (you can prob­a­bly guess how they’re utilised).

Still, there are some decent gags and neat lit­tle touch­es. The appear­ance of the ​’80s gam­ing icon Q‑Bert at a key sto­ry moment is sur­pris­ing­ly delight­ful and the inces­sant hat-tips to gam­ing his­to­ry will have nerds in hys­ter­ics. But Wreck-It Ralph is B‑grade Dis­ney, more Chick­en Lit­tle than Woody and Buzz.