directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston
written by Pamela Ribon and Johnston, Moore, Jim Reardon and Josie Trinidad
As hard as it may be to believe, it's been six years since Walt Disney Animation Studios gobsmacked movie goers and video game nuts of all ages with Wreck-It-Ralph, a hilarious, surprisingly moving fable about a bad guy tired of his thankless job who yearns for greener pastures but ultimately learns to love not just who he is but what he has in life. What was even harder to believe for me was that after giving us this utterly charming, nostalgia-fueled confection, Disney pulled down its pants, squatted and took a giant, steaming dump on it with the message of its sequel.
Six years after the first movie, video game character Wreck-It-Ralph (John C. Reilly) is living in utter contentment. By day he works as the bad guy in the arcade game Fix-It-Felix, and by night he gets to hang out with his best friend, Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) star of the popular racing game Sugar Rush. Unlike Ralph, Vanellope has gotten bored with her life and wonders if there's more out there than just winning races and being queen of her realm all the time. As if in answer to her question, the arcade owner Litwak (Ed O'Neill) installs internet in the arcade, but the Surge Protector (Phil Johnston) declares the portal to the internet off-limits. When Ralph, wanting to make Vanellope happy, builds her a new, "bonus" track, Vanellope, about to win a race in the hands of gamer for the nth time, deviates from the track and actually fights the gamer, resulting in the steering wheel of the game breaking. When Litwak is unable to fix the machine and learns from an online search that a new part would cost more than the game even earns, he decides to pull the plug on it, rendering all of the Sugar Rush characters, including Vanellope, homeless. Wanting to make things right, Ralph decides to set off on a trip through the internet to find a new steering wheel and save Sugar Rush, and Vanellope joins him. They learn that they need money to get the part and in their attempt to make it, they enter a grungy, Grand Theft-Auto-inspired game called Slaughter Race in which they must steal the car of Shank (Gal Gadot) the game's leading antagonist. That doesn't pan out, but Vanellope finds herself drawn more and more to this strange new world, even as Ralph tries to raise the money needed to buy the steering wheel by becoming, of all things, an online video sensation through the prodding of head Buzztube algorithm Yesss (Taraji P. Henson). Soon, both Ralph and Vanellope will have to make some very uncomfortable choices.
The visual craft of this movie is just astonishing. Disney Animation is moving ever upwards and onward, even after having jettisoned its former shepherd John Lassetter on allegations of sexual impropriety, and they show, yet again, why they're at the top of the heap in terms of pure technical wizardry. The internet setting make a lot of online jokes possible, as well as a lot of cameos from other Disney properties including Star Wars (the Stormtroopers and C3PO have walk-ons) and Marvel (Groot and the late Stan Lee both make appearances, although the latter isn't a speaking role). It's pretty fun, if only for the visuals and Easter Eggs.
None of that really matters to me, though because the godawful writing just undermines it all.
This movie is thoroughly awful, but to go into why, I'll have to go into some major spoilers. Read on if you want to know more. If not, then you can end the review here.
1/10
(SPOILER ALERT)
(LAST CHANCE)
When the first movie came along, two other films had already taken a stab at telling a story of a bad guy who turned good (i.e. Megamind and Despicable Me) and so it needed a little something extra to distinguish itself, and apart from a plethora of delightful video game references, it managed to impart a charming message about making the most with what one has, even though it was delivered with all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Ralph's "Bad Guy Anonymous" credo was central to the movie's theme and featured in the movie's most touching moment: "I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."
The flip side of that surprisingly sweet message, however, was an entire community telling Ralph that he was wrong to dream about being a hero rather than a villain, from the entire supporting cast of the game in which he was the bad guy, to the other games he basically invaded, to the storytellers themselves. When Ralph wanted to improve his lot in life by stepping out of the (literal) box in which he had been confined for thirty years, he nearly destroyed his whole world. They even had a name for it: "Going Turbo." Yes, even the bad guy in the film was basically a cautionary tale as to what would happen if Ralph followed through on chasing his dream.
It seemed a pretty strange message for a Disney movie at the time. Don't chase your dreams? Make do with what you have? It seemed a bit out-of-character for the company as a whole, but the real surprise was how they actually managed to make that message work, largely by telling the audience, which consisted mainly of kids: it isn't all about you; sometimes there are people in your life who depend on you. In the end, Ralph learns to love his thankless job because he has a new friend, and because the people in his life have learned to appreciate him more.
And that's what makes the sequel, which basically throws that message out the window, utterly despicable.
Here, Vanellope, after six years of living the life she always wanted to live (a fact established firmly in the first movie) gets bored with her life and wants to head somewhere else, even though she's the lead character of her game (whose picture was even on the side of the machine, a crucial detail from the first film) and easily the most popular one. Sound familiar? She basically wants what Ralph wanted at the beginning of the first movie, except that unlike him, she's living the high life, without a care in the world and yet, unlike Ralph, the storytellers support her desire to "pursue her dream." So Ralph, after thirty years of being the most hated man in his corner of the world, is wrong to want more, but Vanellope, after a paltry six years of having everything she ever wanted, is absolutely right to want exactly the same thing as Ralph did? How does that make any sense at all within the logic of that world?
There's another, decidedly more sinister subtext when one puts the two movies together. Ralph is clearly a poor, working class schlub with ratty clothes, no shoes and poor personal hygiene as repeatedly established by references to his breath. He's a man of simple joys and yet the first movie chastises him for chasing glory and a better station in life. In contrast, Vanellope was programmed with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. She was created as royalty, and the hero of her own game, only to be cheated out of it by someone who jumped ship from his own game. And yet, for all of her privilege, she, according to this film, is entirely justified in her desire to slum it it in the hellish landscape of Slaughter Race just because she's bored. Call it a stretch, but I'd almost say that the movie is declaring that rich people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, even if it means abandoning all personal responsibility, while us poor assholes had better just shut the fuck up and get back in line or there will be dire consequences. Take a look at what happens to Vanellope's game at the end of the movie; it may have been saved, but nobody's playing it, and it's become boring because the racers have all become nice to each other as a result of a barely-discussed subplot involving Fix-it-Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Sgt. Calhoun (Jane Lynch) adopting them all after Sugar Rush was unplugged and turning them into perfect children. Basically, without Vanellope, the game is screwed, even if it isn't explicitly stated, but that's okay, because Vanellope gets to live her dream with Shank and her gang.
And that's another thing; the supporting characters introduced here are the pits, from Gadot's hollow bad girl to Henson's one-note internet mogul. They pale in comparison to the liveliness that Felix and Calhoun brought to the screen in the first film.
Finally, the movie has the temerity to call Ralph clingy and toxic for basically echoing what the entire supporting cast of the first film was telling him. It's even more detestable considering that in the first film, none of the characters trying to talk Ralph out of his quest really gave a shit about him. They were all basically concerned with maintaining their comfortable little status quo. In the second film, in contrast, Ralph actually cares about Vanellope, and the movie is propelled by his efforts to actually help her, first by building her a new "bonus" track, and then by going into the internet to save her game, a game she ends up abandoning anyway. For all his dedication, he is branded as clingy, insecure, and toxic.
I'll tell you what's toxic: this movie. Sure, it's got amazing visuals and funny pop culture references (including a genuinely funny end-credits sequence which earns the film's sole point) but when all of this craftmanship is employed in service of such an awful story that spits in the face of what came before it, this deserves scorn rather than praise.
Now I know how haters of Star Wars: The Last Jedi feel.
Again: 1/10
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