A Refreshing Blast of Arcade Fire

Wreck-It Ralph

***½  out of ****

Directed by: Rich Moore

Featuring the Voice Talents of: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Alan Tudyk and Jane Lynch

Running time: 101 minutes

Wreck-It Ralph is one of the most original animated features to come from the Disney vault. It is packed to the brim with visual humour and verbal wit, while overflowing with the same level of imaginative detail to character and atmosphere that the better pictures in the Pixar pantheon have in their audacious story worlds.

The wizard responsible for this fun, frenetic 101 minutes is television director Rich Moore, responsible for some of The Simpsons’ finest episodes (including "A Streetcar Named Marge" and "Marge vs. the Monorail"). The script from Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee is equally high-concept and character-driven, an irresistible blend of old-school storytelling and new-age visual dynamics.

The title character, voiced endearingly by John C. Reilly, is a nine foot-tall villain with block-sized fists in a retro, coin-operated game called Fix-It Felix. Ralph rampages through an apartment building, smashing the place to bits. When the player presses start, their joystick moves Felix (Jack McBrayer) around as he mends the building with his trusty hammer.

When Felix celebrates the game’s 30th anniversary as part of Litwak’s Arcade, he doesn't invite Ralph to the festive celebrations. Tired of being used just for tantrums, Ralph voices his dismay to a support group of video game villains (a sequence that supplies a surprising number of cameos from licensed characters).

The collective says that he needs to take it easy – the slogan on a banner in the support group room says, “one game at a time.” However, Ralph wants to step away from his code and find his own autonomy. He abandons his game and travels into the realm of a frenetically violent battle world in the game Hero’s Duty, with high-definition graphics and a synth-heavy soundtrack. In that universe, Ralph is destined to win a medal and prove to Felix that he has heroic qualities within him.

However, after ascending to get the victory medal, he loses it to Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), a quizzical child who lives in the world of an obnoxiously cute candy-themed go-kart game, Sugar Rush. The king of the game's land (voiced by Alan Tudyk) has outcasted Vanellope from partaking in the races, condemning her as a “glitch” that could offset the game’s system.

As the nine-foot, eight-bit giant tries to reclaim his medal from Vanellope, the noble Felix joins forces with Hero’s Duty’s intrepid captain, Calhoun (Jane Lynch), to retrieve Ralph and the medal.

The film is more than just a Toy Story surrogate with many licensed video game and arcade characters – even though the barrage of cameos from nostalgic characters recalls Who Framed Roger Rabbit – but a charming, funny and dizzyingly creative adventure.

Like the Pixar film, Wreck-It-Ralph derives its poignancy from the human attributes adopted by wildly colourful “playthings.” It examines an unexplored realm of what recognizable (and some brand-new) arcade characters do when the patrons leave.

Ralph’s existential crisis, which he evokes at his game’s 30th anniversary party, recalls the complacency that Andy’s toys felt in Toy Story 3, while the father-daughter relationship between Ralph and Vanellope that drives the second half of the film is so snappily written it never droops with mawkish sentimentality.

Wreck-It-Ralph thrives on the creative capacity of its buoyant atmosphere and clever screenplay. This is also probably the first Disney film to have a character utter the word “guttersnipe,” a fanciful word made popular by George Bernard Shaw.

The subtle creative touches – the jerky motions of the characters in Felix’s game, the powerbar of Litwak's Arcade as the setting for "Game Central Station” – extend to the pun-filled dialogue. Even snippets involving armoured Oreo cookies and swooning Laffy Taffy are used to enforce the sugary setting, and do not feel like cheap product placement.

It is armed with the regular kid-aimed message to embrace yourself. Vanellope could have been a nuisance under Sarah Silverman’s squirrelly voice (which doesn’t quite match the character’s youthful vigor) but gets a wonderful back-story.

Full of thrilling set-pieces without sacrificing the touching story of heroic reconciliation in the middle, Wreck-It Ralph is the most boundlessly creative adventure that Walt Disney Studios has rendered in years.