Ralph Breaks the Internet

Pulling the Ol' Plugola
or
Life Among the Block-Heads

It's surprising how you can not want something until you need it.

For instance, "Lounge Seating." My first experience of it was at an early proponent of it, and the layout was haphazard and piece-meal—a flat floor with a bunch of barcaloungers underneath the screen. I found it uncomfortable and distracting...(or maybe it was because I was watching Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby). Not even the new experience of being able to raise my feet —without interfering with the seat of the audience-member in front of me—into a semi-reclining position could dissuade me that this was not a step forward in the movie-going experience. Anyway, it was my first introduction to the trend and I found it lacking. But, then my thinking is that you go to the movies to see movies, not to eat popcorn (how can you eat popcorn when you're scribbling notes?). Ever since, I've curled my lip at the idea of "luxury seating" the way a dog curls its lip when it considers a raccoon.

But, I've now come around the other side of the debate after having watched Ralph Breaks the Internet, Disney's sequel to Wreck-It Ralph. "Lounge Seating" was a god-send, and a salvation. I knew I was in for it, when the super-quad-surround sound of the theater was prominently scrunched to the left side of the hall (to the point where the dialog out of the front speakers could be legible only if you stuck your finger...or a Milk-Dud, raisinet, rolled up Red Vine?...in your left ear) to the point where the dust from the vibrating plaster walls on that side were covering up the "row letters" on the aisle carpet.

There are Pop-Up's, Pop-Up's everywhere...

From what I was able to discern, Ralph and Venellope (voiced, as before, by John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman) have become inseparable pals when they're not at the day-jobs as video-game characters in the copies of "Fix-It Felix" and "Sugar Crush" inhabiting the video arcade of the "Family Fun Center" of Mr. Litwak (voiced by Ed O'Neill). Ralph couldn't be happier, but Venellope is starting to get tired of the routine, the same-old, same-old of the three tracks that "Sugar Crush" provides—ya know, sort of like watching a lot of Tom Cruise movies (is this the one where he rides a motorcycle?...oh, right, he does that in ALL of them).

Then, disaster strikes. The steering wheel used by players to drive the "Sugar Crush" cars breaks—Ralph is indirectly involved this time—leaving Venellope "gameless." What to do, what to do. Well, as Litwak has installed a wi-fi router into Fun Center, it's only a matter of time before Ralph and Venellope travel to the Land of the Internet to see if they can find a replacement steering-wheel and get things going again. How they get to the Internet is a tortured path-way that made me think that somebody just applied the pop-psych landscapes of Inside Out and just applied it to dial-up.

The opportunities for satire are as seemingly endless as a YouTube conspiracy video, but given permission and copyright issues inherent in using those company names, the satire is as tough as a NERF™-ball. Ebay, YouTube, Amazon are all mentioned, but Google is confined to a character named Mr. KnowsMore (voiced by Alan Tudyk) who does searches around the Internet, like a kiosk lady at a mall—why they didn't just call him "BING™"* would take enough lawyer's briefs to create its own cease and desist order.

Through the search process, Ralph and Venellope find that they can bid on one of these "Sugar Crush" steering-wheels over at Ebay, but when they get there, they find themselves bidding against another user—all the avatars of real-world users are represented by bi-ped's with block-heads, which gives you an idea of how YOU rate in this movie—which they out-bid with a winning sum of $27,001. Their brief joy at getting it is extinguished when they go to check-out, and find that they don't have any of these dollar-things (being as they're just video-game characters who don't get out much) and are told they have to come up with the cash in 24 hours or they will lose the item.

They go about securing the funds in two ways: from one of the annoying pop-up sellers that zap in everywhere—this one named J.P. Spamley (voiced by Bill Hader), Ralph and Venellope learn they can earn money by playing video-games (imagine!), and their assignment for more than enough to claim the steering wheel is finding an easter-egg in the form of the top prize of a GTA video-clone called "Slaughter Race," the car belonging to the character Shank (voiced by Gal Gadot). Their efforts to get the car has unintended consequences—Shank hooks them up with a viral video channel called BuzzTube...and Venellope develops an interest in wanting to be one of the Fast and Furious in "Slaughter Race."

Ralph's appearance on BuzzTube brings him to the attention of Yesss (voiced by Taraji P. Henson) who uses him to increase traffic to the site, while he gets a pay-out for the number of "like's." Venellope helps out by doing her own pop-up selling, which lands her in...wait.

Let's stop there.

Sooooo...the barcaloungers, back to them. Why my obsession with them? It was around this point in the movie where I found myself sliding down my seat as if I was being pummeled into the very naugahyde fabric of it, from my upright position until I was practically prone. Not sure why; it could have been a number of things. Maybe it was that Venellope ends up at the Disney web-site, and I started to feel like I was being sucked into a corporate version of a black hole where mergered properties start to fold in on themselves, creating a sickening disorientation, like a meta-coma (I laughed when I saw the Disney site being called "Oh My Disney™," thinking it might be a satirical jab of "OMG" where "God"="Disney." But, no, the Disney website is—in reality—"Oh My Disney"). When its acquisitions are trotted out—Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Muppets, but not Fox (too soon for product to be produced, it seems), I sank a little further by the sheer heavy gravity that was being displayed.

And then, a bit of salvation—Venellope meets the Disney princesses™ (and the filmmakers put up the funds for the original voice-artists—the extant ones) and it is as funny and bitchy and irreverent as one would want and the movie gets a nice shot of counter-marketing to off-set the rest of the film's celebration of its own acquisitiveness. The film will, of course, continue on with its life-lessons, its action packed resolution (complete with a creature that seemed like a nightmare out of World War Z) that is the de rigueur denouement of these things, but the highlight of the film is the left-field Princess placement.

And one knows—one just knows—that Disney is thinking of how they can capitalize on it with their own stand-alone movie.

Yeah, spoil it, why doncha?

* As Stephen Colbert once said: "Bing—what you use when you want to 'Google' something."

Wreck-It Ralph

Written at the time of the film's unleashing....

Who Framed Wreck-It Ralph?
or 
Being Two-Bit in an 8-Bit World

It's not that I didn't "like" Wreck-it Ralph.  I did.  I just wasn't moved by it, nor did I care one bit about any of it—not the movie, not the characters—any of it.

Oh, there's a lot to admire: the animation is amazing, albeit to a limited world inside a video game (it can't be too complicated in its design as it's supposed to reflect the limited world-view of a flat 8-bit world refracted in 3-dimensions); the expansions and contractions of those worlds are quite cleverly done—the expansions of those environments being of the commingling of those worlds before the lights turn on in the video arcade, the characters commuting in a Grand Central Station hub to their various scenarios, and the contractions being in the limited animation movements of some of the characters. The voice-acting is fine, headed by John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, and Jack McBrayer (of "30Rock"). The cameos by various amusement game characters are amusing—the Pac-man ghosts, Sonic, Qbert—which gives the whole thing a tinge of Who Framed Roger Rabbit,* Disney Animation has done a great job of it under the tutelage of Pixar's Jon Lasseter.

But, as great as it is, it's hardly inspired, the central conceit being all those video game characters have lives and concerns when no one's looking, which is the idea behind the "Toy Story" franchise. But, instead of that series forming a concept of the toys banding together to get along in The Big Toy-Box, the issues of the segregated video game characters are decidedly trivial and territorial. They inhabit an 8-bit world, but their concerns are decidedly two-bit, as in the story's central story-line. "Wreck-it Ralph" is the villain of the game "Fix-it Felix"—inspired by "Donkey Kong" but not (Mario, remember?) and he's dissatisfied with his life as a villain. He wants to be a hero, but is never given a chance and his intended role keeps him ostracized in the "Felix" community. He's shunned, gets no respect, and isn't even invited to parties. His "villain support group" provides no comfort. So, Ralph decides to expand his horizons (if video games have horizons) and starts visiting other games, like a WOW game with a butch commander in curvy leather (Lynch, of course), then navigates to another game "Sugar Rush" (no doubt coming to a Game Stop near you) where perky princesses race in a candyland world (and one of the racers is voiced by Silverman, not of course).  

There are some wonderful things that could be done here as far as the migration of traditional characters in non-traditional environments, but what's here doesn't have a lot of imagination as far as plot, the complications or the resolution. Ultimately, it's a bright, pretty snooze-fest (I felt the need to feed myself quarters to keep from nodding off). But ultimately I just wanted to move on, feeling like I was losing a life—the only one I have!—just waiting for the blessed relief of "Game Over."

The game-screen of "Fix-It-Felix" and its inspiration "Donkey Kong"©

* ...although you wonder where some other characters are, like Prince of Persia, Mario, Halo, and then you remember "Oh, yeah, they have their own movie franchises" (mostly inactive) and their places are "suggested" by other characters.