My initial reaction to this was, “Ugh! A video game version of Toy Story with flavor-of-the-month voice actors, namely Jane Lynch.” Jane has always been cool (her part in 40 Year Old Virgin was clever), I just feel she’s getting overexposed. I changed my mind from “avoid this” to “give it a shot” when its release drew closer because Ralph is directed by Rich Moore. Who? Rich was the supervising director on Futurama‘s original run on Fox and he was involved with The Simpsons. If he could make me cry at the ending of “Jurassic Bark,” he deserved a shot with this feature.
The trailer covers the plot so I won’t waste any electrons on it and I suppose this review will only assist those who still haven’t seen the movie.
Ralph does have a good pace, it doesn’t linger too long on the predictable emotional climax. You don’t have to well-versed in video-game culture to understand its references but for fans, there is a cornucopia of characters throughout the decades. I’m impressed at Disney’s success at getting so many cleared. This wasn’t a cheap task plus at least several companies who manufactured those games are out of business, Gottleib is the only coming to mind; they made Q-Bert.
Would I watch this again is the real test with many cartoons for me. The quick answer is yes. Unlike many being made, Ralph is more than a pacifier to keep kids quiet for 90 minutes. Besides trying to find all the obscure characters I missed the first time, I did enjoy the story’s execution.
We didn’t get the opportunity to see Ralph in 3-D sadly. I think the two major landscapes in the story would’ve been awesome to experience.
Not that Pixar invented the short feature before the main one but Disney threw in an amusing warmup called Paper Man. They would only be imitating Pixar if it employs technical enhancements planned for their next computer-generated film.
Alamo enhancements: a montage of how the player’s character/ship is killed from numerous video games; the Adventure Time episode when Jake and Finn are trapped in B-Mo; some Tim & Eric with John C. Reilly as a video-game expert; commercials for the old home consoles (I always loved The Tubes starring in Activision’s Megamania game, it was a perfect marriage!) and the opening credits to the R-rated teen-sex romp Joysticks.
They aren’t trying to imitate Pixar…Disney is Pixar. John Lasseter executive produced this movie, and Paperman too.
I said Disney would be imitating Pixar if the short was a preview of what Disney plans for their next feature.
Ownership has nothing to do with strategies since corporations also build up silos between their brands, divisions and studios. However, Pixar is getting folded into Disney’s general mediocrity as Cars 2 and Brave demonstrated.