But, since the family dog just came back from some pretty extensive knee surgery and is feeling pretty sorry for herself, it seems like a good time to dig it out and air it.
I'm going to start by saying that Wreck-It Ralph seems to be the perfect video game movie for people who don't really like video games. It has a lot of references to earlier games and general "rules" for how video games work, but instead of trying to explain them in a logical way or get caught up in the details, it instead simply brushes the questions you have aside and dazzles you with imaginative settings, great characterizations, and an engaging story.
I was hesitant about seeing it, because, to be honest, most of the voice cast haven't really done things I've enjoyed. I like Sarah Silverman and I think she has a razor-sharp sense of humor, but the things I've enjoyed most were her roles on Greg The Bunny, her PSAs, and a few cameos she had in movies. John C. Reilley was always better to me as a dramatic actor than a comedy actor, Jack McBrayer I only really remembered from 30 Rock, and Jane Lynch...well, okay, Jane Lynch is just awesome in anything she does.
In this movie, however, everything works, and while I can recognize the actors voices if I listen and focus on it, the depth they give their characters helps them vanish and the character take center stage. Jane Lynch has a harder time with this, since I'm pretty sure the character was designed with her in mind, but after the initial shock of "holy cow, that's Jane Lynch!" you're able to push aside a mental image of her in that tracksuit from Glee and focus on her character as well. This, I'm sure a lot of people would realize if they thought about it, is a really tough thing to do. Look at Chris Rock in Madagascar. Any time he was talking, all I could think was "oh, it's Chris Rock as a zebra."
I was also pretty hesitant about the idea of doing a movie for kids based around video games. Video game movies have never really had a good track record, whether it's movies about people who play them (The Wizard) to simply adapting them from game to film (EVERY feature film about video games). These fears were calmed, though, when I first learned it would star original characters, so there was no fear of a bad adaptation, and was done in a way to give it a large plot (something a bit more epic than "a kid needs to get across country to enter a tournament so Nintendo can premiere Super Mario Bros. 3") that had some genuine tension.
On the topic of story, let's look at the basic pitch. Wreck-It Ralph, the title character, has had the same job in a video game for decades now. He smashes up a building, and Fix-It Felix shows up to, well, fix it. Then a group of people throw him off the building into the mud. That's it. Lather, rinse, repeat every day the arcade is open. For most video game characters, having a regular job is the joy of being in the arcade, but Ralph wants some recognition and respect, which the characters in his game seem to be completely unable to recognize.
This leads Ralph on a mission to prove he could be a hero in another game and come back with proof he's more than just the "bad guy." In his journey, he gets caught up in a futuristic first person shooter that had very heavy shades of Halo and Gears of War called Hero's Duty, and a candy-based Japanese cart-racing game called Sugar Rush that I swear I could be first in line to buy if it ever came out for consoles.
Now, there is one voice actor and character I'm not mentioning to avoid spoilers (beyond those you get from either the trailer or the commercials), because I wanted to talk about this person/character without giving anything away. This is a character who you're convinced is going to be a secondary character through most of the film. In fact, the character seems so well-suited to their role and what they do in the movie, that when the character suddenly became major later in the movie (seriously, major character), it took me by surprise.
The person playing that character? When I saw the name on the credits list, I was floored. It was only after watching the movie a second time was I even able to remotely picture the person from everything else I've seen that person in with this character.
The movie is fun for kids, but the story is enough fun for adults. It has a ridiculous number of cameos and pop culture references (pick the movie up on Blu-Ray to have Chris Hardwick of The Nerdist fame as well as "that guy who used to host Singled Out" pop up every time you pause the film with trivia tidbits about the movie, it's worth it), but you don't have to recognize them to get what kind of role they play, even if it's someone classic or someone original. The characters blend well enough together that I was left wondering if a background character was new or if it was someone I just couldn't recognize.
Both times I watched the movie, I had a blast and found myself drawn in to the world that was created. It isn't perfect (one scene involving something like quicksand feels a bit drawn out), but everything else in the film fits together extremely well. I highly recommend it, as it's some of the most fun I've had watching a movie in some time.
And I really, really, really want a home console version of Sugar Rush. I would play that game until the disc reading laser burned etches into the game disc.
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