Wreck-It Ralph

I've been avoiding going to movies geared towards children not because I dislike them, but because I like to concentrate on the film.  Especially since nowadays a lot of kids' films throw in a few jokes for adults, you're rewarded for your attention to detail.  It's hard to pay that much attention when there are kids talking, screaming, running, and basically being children the moment they're asked to sit still for 90 minutes.

            For once that didn't stop me.  On Saturday I went out and saw Wreck-It Ralph, children be damned.  But a funny thing happened.  Not a single kid stirred from their seat, and barely a word was spoken for the entire 101 minute run-time.

            On to the review!

            For those of you who don't know, Wreck-It Ralph is a film about video games.  Or, more specifically, video game characters and what they do in their down-time when the arcade is closed.

            Poor Ralph (John C. Reilly) has been toiling away as the titular bad guy in Fix-It Felix Jr. for 30 years now, and the only thing he has to show for it is the fear and distaste of all the apartment dwellers.  The tenants would much rather spend time with Felix Jr. and his magic hammer.  Ralph is finally sick of being the bad guy, and goes on an adventure to earn his own medal, thinking that's all it will take for everyone to accept him (and maybe make him a cake).

            His adventure starts off poorly when he tries to earn a medal in Hero's Duty, a modern-day shooter.  His continued misadventures take him to Sugar Rush, our Mario Kart stand-in.  There he gets into some shenanigans with an unwanted racer named Vennelope von Shweetz (Sarah Silverman).  Meanwhile, Felix Jr. (Jack McBrayer) is hunting down Ralph before their game gets unplugged, enlisting the aid of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) from Hero's Duty.

            Got all that?  Good.

            What's best about Wreck-It Ralph is the word that's built around the story.  The idea of characters travelling to other games via a game-central station, which is in reality the arcade's surge protector, is pretty ingenious.  Having characters from games we know about such as Q-Bert, Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros. is just an added treat.

            The movie is fun and smartly written, and the script manages to keep kid's interest while still delivering engrossing and intelligent dialog for us old fogeys.  Hell, there are only two poop jokes!

            Everyone delivers a great vocal performance and it seems like everyone was perfectly cast, or was at least having so much fun that you can't tell if they were just picking up a paycheck.  Jane Lynch especially delivers a great performance as the gruff leader who's seen too damn much and doesn't have time for your shit.  The only voice that threw me off was Felix's, because Jack McBrayer was quite literally playing the exact same role that he does in 30 Rock.  That was kinda weird.

            The animation is fantastic, and they even went so far as to have different characters from different games move, well, differently.  The apartment dwellers in Fix-It Felix have a jerky, old-timey animation style, while the characters from newer games move much more fluidly.  This visual clue is neat reminder of how far we've come in video game animation.

            If you even remotely enjoy kids' movies, video games and/or game references, or just want a solid story with great animation, you should do yourself a favor and check out Wreck-It Ralph.  It is easily just as good as some of my favorite Pixar films.