Review of Wreck-It Ralph (2012) by Andy P — 01 Mar 2014

2012 was a strange year in which both Pixar and Disney released films which could have easily been made by each other. Pixar's 'Brave' is about a princess whom rebels against her controlling mother.

It's not what Pixar films are usually about, this is the sort of thing you'd expect from one of the films in Walt Disney's Animated Classics canon. In fact, two of the last three instalments in the famed canon were princess movies: 2009's 'The Princess and the Frog', and 2010's 'Tangled' (with a Winnie the Pooh sequel in 2011).

So just as Disney were returning to their princess fairytale roots, they release 'Wreck-It Ralph', a story involving video game characters living in a society that behave and live much like humans do, amongst humans, without humans knowing they live this way.

Now, this is the sort of thing we'd expect from Pixar rather than just Disney. 'Toy Story' had a community of toys, 'A Bug's Life' had ants, 'Monster's Inc.' had monsters, etc.

It begs the question why did Pixar make 'Brave' and why did Disney make 'Wreck-It Ralph'? Why didn't they swap movies? Well, whatever the reason, people may forget that although a movie like 'Brave' is new territory to Pixar, 'Wreck-It Ralph' isn't entirely foreign with regards to Disney's canon.

Movies like 'The Rescuers', it's sequel 'The Rescuers Down Under', and 'Basil The Great Mouse Detective' were all about mice whom live in a society that behave and live much like humans do, amongst humans, without humans knowing they live this way.

So the idea of non-humans living amongst humans like humans do has been done by Disney before, but the tackling of the video game world does seem to be more Pixar-ish than a Disney canon film. As such, I did get a feeling that this could have been a better movie had Pixar made it.

The video game world is explored and the movie's greatest strength is exploring it, but I don't think it was explored enough. We get glimpses of the diversity of video games such as 1980s pixelated retro games, 3D sci-fi shoot-'em-ups and anime-styled racing games.

I would have liked to have seen more, but once the film arrives at the Sugar Rush racing game, (which echoes Mario Kart) the film begins to "lag" (hehe). Perhaps less time in Sugar Rush and more time exploring the video game world would have made this film something to behold, as is it's an interesting movie with plenty of entertainment, a loveable lead character, some fun side characters/voice performances (Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch's vocal talents perfectly fit their great characters), but I think this wasn't up to the standard of Pixar's similar films (i.

E. 'Toy Story').