The princess is in this castle

Rating: 8/10 (5 May 2013)

When the villain of a popular arcade game decides he's had enough of being the bad guy, he sets out to win over the other denizens of his game, with hilarious consequences. Wreck-It Ralph is a wonderful little film that combines smart dialog, brilliant animation varieties, and an abundance of familiar video-game characters - even to those who don't play games on a regular basis.
Ralph (voice by the underrated John C. Reilly) has one job - wreck an apartment building. When a kid puts a quarter into the machine's slot. Ralph shouts his catch phrase and then climbs the building (he's quite large), destroying windows, bricks, the whole nine yards, until the hero of the game, Fix-It Felix (voice of Jack McBrayer) arrives to save the day (with the help of the human player). The game is sort of a combination of Donkey Kong (helpful handyman) and Rampage, a game in which huge monsters scaled skyscrapers just to destroy them.
Anyway, Ralph has a quandary. While the rest of game's characters live in the fancy building within the game, he lives in a literal pile of bricks and dreams of something more. And when he notices that Felix is throwing a party celebrating the game's 30th anniversary without inviting Ralph...well, Ralph doesn't much appreciate that and vows to win a medal, any medal, in order to convince the building's occupants that he's not as bad as everyone thinks.
This leads Ralph to jump into other games, a tactic that's forbidden. He winds up in a first-person shooter game much like Call of Duty, sneaking in as a foot soldier, and manages to grab a medal. Long story short (ha), this sort of screws up that game for the human player, and the main character of said war game has to track Ralph down among the other games in the arcade, because she realizes something else has left the game with Ralph.
Ralph winds up in a game that's a mixture of Mario Kart and Candyland. Actually sounds like fun, doesn't it? He meets Vanellope (voice of Sarah Silverman), who's a glitch, an error in the game's code that would be more trouble to remove than leave in, so in she stays. Vannelope manages to get Ralph's precious medal but promises to give it back if he'll help her build a racecar so she can win the game's race. Well, the race within the game. Still with me? Vannelope is an outcast as a glitch, so she has quite a bit to prove. Ralph, of course, will help her, even though she's a smart-aleck little brat.
Is there more to all of this than meets the eye? Sure! Will it go over most kids' heads? No! Is it still enjoyable for physically grown-up people? Heck yes! Sure, this is a Disney film, so Lessons will be Learned, but there's so much eye-candy - uh, literally - that the message is not heavy handed in the least. And what is that message? Nonspoiler alert - it might be that Ralph does have what it takes to be a Good Guy after all.
I loved how there were so many different characters from different game systems (Nintendo, XBox, arcade-only, Sega, you name it); the Bad Guy support group includes one of the ghosts from Pac-Man, Bowser from the Mario games, M. Bison from Street Fighter, one of the guys from Mortal Kombat, and so on. Each is drawn in his own original style. Same for the various good guys who make cameos in the movie, like Sonic the Hedgehog, and Pac-Man himself. The blending of art styles is impeccable and spectacular. I'm also a fan of quick wit, and Silverman can quick-wit with the best of them, particularly when matched against a slow-witted character like Ralph. Oh, and did I mention the Candy King? Yeah, he runs things in that candy racecar game, and he's voiced by Alan Tudyk (Firefly) with an accent right out of old Hanna-Barbera films. Priceless.
Is Wreck-It Ralph a great film? Not exactly, but it's hard to find a comparable movie. Other Disney movies have their own style, as do the Disney/Pixar films. This one is a stand-alone treat, exhilarating for kids of all ages, especially those who grew up playing that old 8-bit NES. Or those of us who were stuck with the Atari 2600. Or those who spent hours and hours in actual arcades, fighting space invaders and helping a dumb frog cross a freeway. And even if you've never once picked up a game controller, you'll appreciate the humor, the voice delivery, the story, and the message.