Wreck-It Ralph

The plight of Wreck-It Ralph was best said by Jessica Rabbit. “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”

“Wreck-It Ralph” is a movie with a killer premise about an 8-bit arcade game villain who wants to be the good guy for once. It’s a cute film with a lot of heart that kids will gobble up, but it doesn’t represent video games in the way I would’ve hoped.

Very much like “Toy Story,” when the arcade closes, all the characters leave their in-game roles and live out lives of their own. They can even leave their own game and interact with others in a central train station hub, better known to us humans as a power strip.

Poor Ralph (John C. Reiley) has been the bad guy in his “Donkey Kong” inspired game for 30 years, and in all that time the townspeople have heaped praise on the game’s hero, Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer), and made him live in a garbage dump. In the film’s most clever scene, Ralph seeks help at an AA meeting for video game villains, and Bowser, Blinkie, Zangeef, Dr. Eggman and a stray zombie get him to realize that being a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a “bad guy.”

But in an effort to win some pride, Ralph leaves his game and first joins a violent and realistic First Person Shooter and then a “Mario Kart” racer, where he helps a glitchy character named Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) win her own in-game acceptance.

“Wreck-It Ralph” is at its best when it’s riffing on games. The references function mostly as Easter Eggs for a nerdy audience brought up on Playstation, but the fun nuances are everywhere in the film’s first half hour, from a PSA featuring Sonic the Hedgehog to a race on the infamous Rainbow Road. Even the animation reflects the way certain game characters move or how background elements can be pixelated and under-developed.

For a movie that’s been given so much care, it’s a shame to see it turn into a vehicle for potty humor and lame puns about candy. The film’s big chases and action sequences feel less like actual levels in a game and more like bland movie set pieces. There’s a gag that involves Laffy Taffys and Fix-It Felix hitting himself in the face with a hammer that feels very low-brow.

And yet “Wreck-It Ralph” is sugary sweet. The characters are perky and optimistic, and Ralph is never anything but loveable. He just gets a bad rap.

I read on Twitter that this was the year that Disney made a Pixar movie and Pixar made a Disney movie (“Brave”), but “Wreck-It Ralph” is not quite “Toy Story.” It needs to level up if it wants to beat that.

3 stars