Video games have always been a huge part of my life. I've been playing them ever since I was 5 and I don't think there will ever be a time in my life where I stop playing them. So naturally with my enjoyment of video games, I was excited to check out Wreck-It Ralph which is centered around video games. Unfortunately, I didn't really connect with Wreck-It Ralph. It is definitely an affectionate and well-animated throwback to old-school gaming which I appreciated, but besides that I really didn't find much to like here. It's not particularly funny at all and it relies heavily on tired fart jokes which is very uncharacteristic of Disney's animated films. Clearly I'm not expecting ever kids film to have razor-sharp wit and absolutely hilarious jokes, but about 90% of the humor in this film misses the mark. The emotional elements to the story are also really overdone and cheesy. It is occasionally touching and sweet, but a lot of time it's melodramatic to a ridiculous extent and takes away from the few moments that actually make an emotional connection. The biggest failure of Wreck-It Ralph though is it's inability to create characters that I actually cared about. Ralph (voiced by John C.Reilly) is just about the only character that I had any kind of attachment to, but that only lasted for the first half-hour when it's focused on his origins as a villain (and his desire to stop being the bad guy) before he meets the incredibly obnoxious Vaneople Von Schweetz (voiced by Sarah Silverman) and gets thrown to the way side. I normally like Silverman, but her presence here was obnoxious and I couldn't stand when Von Schweetz was on screen. If they hadn't included Von Schweetz and the whole subplot with her game Sugar Rush and just focused strictly on Ralph, I probably would've liked it a lot better. Wreck-It Ralph really is just a wasted opportunity. It had potential to be a fun nostalgic trip back to 8-bit gaming, but it's lack of strong characters, laughs, and a solid script really squander any of the fun that could've been had and what we're left with is just average .
2.5/5 Stars
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