Wreck-It Ralph Review

Wreck-It Ralph has been very well-received. Wreck-It Ralph relies on four things – empathy for Wreck-It Ralph, his appeal as an anti-hero, an audience which grew up with video games, and skillful, colourful animation.

I attended the movie with a large group of people 30 and under. The 30-year-old was seeing it for the second time. When he was growing up, he played video games. So, it seemed, did a large part of the audience.  Even I was familiar with video games to an extent, as a parent of video-game players. The movie though held a lot more appeal for them than for me. Yes, it was quite good, but I would not have gone to see it twice, and the story-line just didn’t seem to have the same freshness, for instance as accomplished by Monsters Inc did or Wall-E.

The background premise of the movie is that at night, when everyone goes home, the characters from the arcade machines live a life of their own – a similar idea to the Toy-Story set up. In his “real” life, Wreck-It Ralph is fed up with being left out in the cold, never receiving the plaudits, medals or friendship heaped on Fix-It Felix, the hero from the game he is in.

We feel sorry for Wreck-It Ralph, and identify with him wanting a bit of affection and respect.In the world beyond the game, he leaves “his” game and looks to be a hero in another game, causing all kinds of chaos, and ending up having to rely on a character that is apparently a “glitch” in yet another game for things to come out right. He learns the ”true” meaning of being a hero.

Because he left the game he was in originally, and he played an essential part in it, the game appears not to be working, and the machine is in danger of being permanently shut. However, Wreck-It Ralph returns in time, saves the day and gains more popularity with the other game members.

Colours in the movie game world are often very vivid, particularly in the game world the glitch inhabits. This probably adds to the appeal for the very young. The scenery in the various games mimics well video game scenery, and many characters seen were familiar to young viewers, from actual video games. Just to prove I am not entirely cynical, I did like the happy ending, as did the rest of the audience.