Brilliant casting, cleverly imagined world

Rating: 8/10 (2 November 2012)

This is one of the best animated movies to come out in years. The concept is a ton of fun and they do an excellent job of blending the three converging world of 8-buit game graphics, cg game graphics and the outside world. Hoard to explain, but you should find that to be the most clever and original part of this movie. The visuals are beautiful and the world is wonderfully imagined with a solid set of 'rules' to keep everything within the realm of believability, in a fantasy sense. There is lost of fun humor and some absolutely brilliant characters. The best part is the voice casting. The casting, which was just perfect, especially for the four main characters. John C. Reilly should get some kind of Oscar for best VO-acting.
The reason I didn't give it a 10 is because I really don't give anything a 10, other than maybe one or two movies EVER. I feel that people give out tens (or five stars, as the case may be) too easily which dilutes the power of a 'perfect' 10.
The reason I didn't give it a 9 was because of a few shortcomings, specifically: 1) Some potty and insult humor. 2) A few juvenile, catch-phrase crutches where something more clever could have been used without sounding pretentious. 3) Some overused themes, like 'Appreciate Yourself for Who You Are' and 'True friendship is more important than material rewards' -- but, hey, it's an animated movie, what would you expect? 4) (Hopefully this doesn't count as a spoiler, but...) The ending was weakened a little due to a predictable reveal that felt like something I've seen way too many times before.
But based on the clever concept, great characters and some really fun action, this easily moves up to be one of my top 10 favorite animated movies of all time. And just to put that in perspective, Up, Wall-E and Finding Nemo do NOT make that list for me (although most of the rest of Pixar movies do, The Incredibles being #1).