This past Thanksgiving weekend Disney released the sequel to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph Breaks the Internet, bringing back the cast of wonderful arcade characters you know and love for further adventures throughout the world of video games. But this time they go to the Internet, thus more adventure and comedy with Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz ensues. What should have been a sweet story ended up way too long, very basic and an overall disappointment compared to the original. Not everything needs a sequel.
Life is pretty much the same from where we left Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) and Ralph (John C. Reilly), doing the same thing day-to-day: playing in their games, hanging out and spending time with their friends, Fix-It Felix Jr. (Jack McBrayer) and Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (Jane Lynch). Life seems perfect, at least for Ralph. Vanellope is looking for more and is unsure how to get it. So due to Ralph trying to help, he inadvertently breaks her game. And it cost too much to get it fixed, so the Sugar Rush game will be shut off, leading all the game characters with nowhere to go.
Ralph and Vannellope decide to travel to the Internet to see if they can get a new steering wheel from eBay. Not understanding how the Internet or how money works they bid a huge number they can’t possible pay, leading them down a path of doing things on the internet to get money: funny videos for “Buzztube”, meaning gifs/memes, etc. They need to get all the “likes” they can before the clock runs out on their eBay bid. While trying to get money Vanellope meets Shank (Gal Gadot), a racer in Slaughter Race, the Internet’s premier and best racing game. Vannellope is in love with the new game and realizes it’s what she been looking for her whole life. And she decides to stay, causing Ralph to become unhinged with anger which leads him to unleashing a virus and essentially “breaking the Internet. This causes everyone to deal with their feelings and work together to stop the virus and try to live happily ever after.
It’s a good movie and even has some great moments. But over all, this isn’t a great movie. The first movie was amazing from start to finish, full of humor, heart, friendship and originality. This movie is missing pretty much all that and what little there is, isn’t enough. It’s one of the most disappointing Disney movies in recent years. The film feels dated already and relies way too much on Internet humor, memes and current pop culture references which won’t be funny to kids in two years. The problem with basing a movie around the Internet is the Internet. It moves too fast for anything to stick let alone to be remembered. When you finally get a joke it’s already old and the net has moved on to the next big joke.
This movie is way too long. It’s 2 hours. Way too long for an animated feature filled with many adult themes for kids to watch. Many kids in the audience lost interest about an hour in. And it feels like two hours too: there’s a few scenes in the movie where time just seems to stop. The movie doesn’t seem to know what it is at points, with the themes and plots all over the place hoping to land. Less is more: the filmmakers should have focused more on a few plots rather than so many.
Spending way too much time with Ralph and Vannellope is another big issue. Yes, I’m aware they’re the main characters. But in the first one we got to spend time with a great cast of characters. Here those first movie characters have a few lines and then bomb out and we never see them again until the end. Feels like a waste to set them up in the beginning with what looks like a B-plot for the film that never happens. There is only the one A-plot and it gets old real quick.
There’s no antagonist in the movie. No bad guy! Then who do our heroes go up against you may ask? Themselves. The real villain in this movie is the characters themselves overcoming their own BS. Or Ralph. There’s strong case to be made that Ralph is a villain. His trying to help causes so many problems all for the characters it’s not even funny.
The best part of the movie is when the characters go to the Disney website and interact with Disney characters new and old. Vannellope finds herself lost and ends up finding the Disney princesses’ room where she and all of them girl talk and have a good time. It’s at this point in the movie everything become very meta and Deadpoollike: inside jokes about Disney films, breaking the fourth wall and finally some real humor. Seeing and hearing the princesses being self-aware about themselves and their history is a sheer joy. It’s a shame the whole movie couldn’t have been something like that.
Ralph Breaks the Internet isn’t a bad film, it just isn’t a great one. So many positives going on: the visuals, voice acting, and animation is amazing. It’s a shame the story just wasn’t as good as the world going on around it. This was a big letdown. We as an audience deserved better.
