Wreck-It Ralph

Released: 2012
Animated
Director: Rich Moore
Starring: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman
Running Time: 108 minutes
Rated: PG

The breakdown:  A video game bad guy from the 80's wants desperately to be a good guy for once and feel like a hero to someone.

This bad guy named Ralph that's supposed to be like Donkey Kong from the 80's goes around wrecking a building in a 1980's 8-bit game.  There's Fix It Felix who goes around and fixes everything that Ralph wrecks and that's the whole game.  Somehow the game has endured at the local arcade and one day Ralph realizes it's his game's 30th anniversary.  He lives alone in a dump while Felix lives in a high rise apartment complex and is loved and adored by the tenants that have their stuff fixed by him.  Ralph sees that that night, the tenants are throwing a big party and no one invited him.  He goes up to the penthouse and demands to be included, although, no one really wants him there.  He ends up ruining a few parts of the penthouse and embarrasses himself.  He leaves and goes to the equivalent of Grand Central Station for the arcade games.  There he can hang out with other video game characters and finds himself intruding on another game entirely.  One where the main objective is to be a space soldier fighting off space bugs.  The prize is a gold medal which he wants badly to prove to the people in his own video game that he too, can be a hero, or good guy.  He ends up messing up that game and rocketing into, yet another game called Sugar Rush.  In this game, the world is full of candy and players compete in homemade cars to race to the finish line.  This is where most of the movie takes place.

While the movie is super colorful and very nostalgic, it does not hold a place as one of my favorite Pixar movies.  Part of the unfortunate part of the movie is the casting of the very unfunny Sarah Silverman as the female lead.  She's annoying and stupid in real life, and in the movie her character is annoying and immature, though her character is a kid so I'll have to admit most kids are immature.  I think another unfortunate part of the movie is, if you're going to do something nostalgic, do it all the way.  They do show some familiar characters like Sonic the Hedgehog, the ghosts and Pacman from Pacman, the Tapper game, and a few others, but I feel I would've enjoyed even more old 80's game references.  The little touches often make for the best pieces of the movie and the use of some characters only moving in 8-bit squares or making a couple of doughnuts be the cops is cute and memorable.  I didn't laugh as much as I was hoping for, but overall the movie was ok.  It's not one of the ones I want to own, or see again, but if you like Pixar movies, you'll probably like this one.

2 and 1/2 out of 5 only because I know how good Pixar movies can be, so this one falls short of something like Toy Story or Finding Nemo.