Ralph Breaks the Internet

We are liv­ing in a gold­en age of sequels, pre­quels, reboots and reshoots – no mat­ter what the film, if it’s a suc­cess you can guar­an­tee the first ques­tion on everyone’s lips will be, ​‘So, will there be a sequel?’ From fran­chis­es that para­chute into the mul­ti­plex straight from a stu­dio exec’s cor­ner office to the green­lit sequels for run­away stand­alone hits (A Qui­et Place, Call Me by Your Name), some­times it feels like every­thing is a copy of a copy.

Six years after the plucky retro ani­mat­ed com­e­dy Wreck-It Ralph hit cin­e­mas, the inevitable sequel has found its way to the big screen, resplen­dent with overt prod­uct place­ment, a Kar­dashi­an-influ­enced title (like­ly to go com­plete­ly over the heads of the film’s intend­ed audi­ence) and an all-star voice cast.

Our hero Ralph (John C Reil­ly) is pret­ty much how we left him, liv­ing out a peace­ful – if not monot­o­nous – life in the arcade with his best friend Vanel­lope (Sarah Sil­ver­man). They cause gen­tle hav­oc, they cameo in oth­er games, and for Ralph that’s quite enough excite­ment. But young Vanel­lope longs for some­thing new. When the arcade’s elder­ly pro­pri­etor final­ly installs wifi, it opens the door to a whole new online world, one that sings with sound and fury, from viral videos to vicious com­ment sec­tions. While Ralph is keen to return to their old life, Vanel­lope is trans­fixed by the pos­si­bil­i­ties the inter­net offers, and starts to con­sid­er what life might be like out­side of the arcade.

If Wreck-It Ralph dealt with the anx­i­eties around mak­ing friends, Ralph Breaks the Inter­net is a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion. Ralph and Vanel­lope deal with the dif­fi­cul­ties that come with main­tain­ing a friend­ship when you feel you’re mov­ing apart. To its cred­it, the film doesn’t talk down to young view­ers about the ils of the inter­net, seem­ing­ly accept­ing that for a whole gen­er­a­tion, rela­tion­ships forged online real­ly are their entire world.

There’s no Baby Boomer Fear of the Unknown here, and it feels like Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios have been tak­ing hints from their sis­ter stu­dio Pixar, imbu­ing their own films with real emo­tion­al intel­li­gence. Reil­ly and Sil­ver­man are a dou­ble act suit­ed to this – their charis­ma feels easy, and they hit emo­tion­al beats with ease. There isn’t much room for any­one else in this two-han­der though, and the rest of the cast (Gal Gadot, Tara­ji P Hen­son, Bill Had­er) gets short shrift. That said, look out for an amus­ing Alfred Moli­na cameo.

Yet the film’s emo­tion­al res­o­nance is coun­tered by a heavy dose of bit­ter-tast­ing prod­uct place­ment. Just about any inter­net mono­lith you can think of gets a namecheck, and the likes of Ama­zon, YouTube and eBay are even woven into the cen­tral plot. It’s rem­i­nis­cent of 2017 stinker The Emo­ji Movie in this respect – so des­per­ate to point to pop cul­ture that it already feels dat­ed the sec­ond it appears on screen.

Sim­i­lar­ly, a whole scene ded­i­cat­ed to show­cas­ing the entire Dis­ney cat­a­logue (from Star Wars to The Mup­pet Show to Mar­vel and beyond) gives the whole thing a smug stu­dio over­tone. And at two hours long, it’s a bit like watch­ing a slick­ly pro­duced Christ­mas ad. The best Dis­ney films in recent years have been the ones that don’t shout their prov­i­dence from the rooftops, but main­tain that air of ani­mat­ed mag­ic (think Moana, Coco and Zoo­trop­o­lis). For all its salient points about friend­ship and anx­i­ety, Ralph Breaks the Inter­net smells like cold, hard, cyn­i­cal cash.