Runtime: 1 hour, 52 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Directors: Phil Johnston and Rich Moore
Quick Impressions:
“I can’t wait to see Ralph break the internet!” my three-year-old exclaimed in delight on the drive to the theater. Then ten seconds later, he fell asleep.
That was hardly surprising since he’d woken up at 4:00 that morning. Perhaps not so coincidentally, my husband also woke up at 4:00. Meanwhile, four o’clock found me still desperately trying to fall asleep. So the real surprise is that any of us remained awake on the drive to the theater. But at that point, there was no question of running home for a group nap. We had purchased tickets (for eight) in advance. It was the day before Thanksgiving. My sister was in town, and we were all going to celebrate family by seeing a movie, grabbing burgers, then rushing home to make cranberry sauce and four pies. Napping would have to wait! We had a movie to see (and twenty-one apples to peel, core, slice, coat in sugar mixture, then accidentally throw all over the kitchen).
Fortunately, we were able to wake my son (a miracle) because he was really excited to see the movie…until it came on. Then he quickly got bored.
“UGHHHH!” he kept groaning as he roamed restlessly from lap to lap. “When is Ralph going to break the internet?”
At that point, I started to worry. I was pretty sure “breaks the internet” was just a clever title, playing on the well known computer age idiom and Ralph’s tendency to wreck stuff. I didn’t think Ralph was actually going to break the internet at all, and if he did, I was sure he would do it metaphorically.
Thankfully, I was wrong. At the movie builds to its last enormous showdown, Ralph literally does break the internet in just about every sense you can imagine.
My three-year-old was thrilled. He loved the ending so much. He also adored the two post-credits scenes. (They were pretty great. In fact, I think I would have liked this movie much better if it had started with the ending. Those two scenes during the credits are by far the best part.)
My sister, my daughter, and my parents all had lots of positive things to say about the movie as we had lunch afterwards, but my stepson, my husband, and I all found it disappointing. I will admit, though, that my husband and I might have liked it better if we’d slept the night before.
The Good:
Some parts of this movie are so good. My question is, why are there other parts? Wouldn’t it be a better strategy to include only the good parts? Then if the movie is too short, come up with some other good parts and throw those into the mix.
By far the best part of the Ralph Breaks the Internet is the way it makes its Disney website into an online Disney park. (Wording is getting tricky here. I wanted to say “a virtual online Disney park,” using “virtual” to mean that the movie almost goes this far. But when talking about something that exists on the internet, “a virtual Disney park” sounds like said Disney park actually does fully exist in that space.) Let’s just say the Disney website in the movie isn’t Disneyland, but it’s close. (If you want my opinion, they should have set a movie exclusively here. And in fact, they still can. Make that movie, Disney animation. I will be the first one to buy a ticket.)
Disney owns just about everything these days–Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, the Muppets, (20th Century Fox?). It’s amazing (and fun) to see famous characters from different franchises wandering around the same space, and I think the filmmakers should have taken it even farther. (I mean, Disney own this stuff. Why not use it as much as possible? Call the movie, “Ralph Goes to the World of Disney.”) Imagine the costumed characters who mill around real life Disney parks, doing little shows and letting fans queue for photo-ops. Now imagine Ralph spending two hours in this environment while the Muppets, Woody and Buzz, and the Star Wars droids take on Thanos because they’re made of manufactured materials, so his little finger-snap move doesn’t work on them. Anything could happen here. What if Darth Maul falls in love with Miss Piggy? (He’s not a Jedi, so I guess that would be okay. Maybe not with Kermit.) (Ooh! But what if Yoda falls in love with Miss Piggy? That’s problematic for so many reasons!)
Absolutely best are all the Disney princesses. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by mentioning them. They’re shown in the trailer. Actually, speaking of the trailer, I wasn’t entirely charmed by these princesses when I saw them there. I thought their inclusion seemed gimmicky. But I was wrong.
The Disney princesses aren’t just around for a cameo. They actually contribute meaningfully to important, plot-advancing moments. And this isn’t just an exploitative peek at a few popular ones. We get a pretty comprehensive group–Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Elsa, Anna (possibly some I’ve forgotten).
What’s great is that we don’t just see them. We hear them speak with their actual, original voices, though, obviously, deceased (and in one case, elderly) voice actresses have been replaced with living ones. We also get to hear their theme music, see them use their powers/strengths. Every time they’re around, the movie is so much fun and full of delightful Easter Eggs. I wish they were in it more.
Now perhaps you’re asking yourself, “If this movie features all of the best Disney princesses, what more could the filmmakers possibly do to appeal to little girls?”
Well, they also have Wonder Woman. Okay, Disney doesn’t own D.C. (yet), so they don’t actually have Wonder Woman, but they did the next best thing and cast Gal Gadot.
My daughter was so delighted to recognize her voice. “Is that Gal Gadot?” she whispered almost immediately. She was so thrilled to be right. Recently she’s started recognizing actresses more and more. She was very pleased with herself.
Gadot voices Shank, a wonderful new character, wonderful mainly because she looks so much like Gal Gadot. The animators have somehow imbued her with all of Gadot’s energy.
Another great addition is Yesss, the head of Buzz Tube who guides Ralph on his quest to go viral. My daughter and I spent the entire movie exchanging whispered guesses, trying to recognize the actress voicing her. It’s Taraji P. Henson, who actually has a very distinctive voice. I can’t believe it took me so long to place her, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover how many actresses my nine-year-old could rattle off.
Based on what I’ve said so far, you may be thinking, “Maybe Disney worried Ralph Breaks the Internet wouldn’t appeal enough to girls, so they added all the princesses, Wonder Woman, and Taraji P. Henson.” Honestly, that’s what I’m thinking. It kind of looks like that to me. Girls also break things, and play video games, and use the internet, of course, but maybe market research has shown that Ralph as a character isn’t popular enough to draw a female audience, so they threw in the princesses, Wonder Woman, and Cookie from Empire (which is a pretty sound strategy).
For the record, my son really enjoyed seeing all the princesses, too, but I still think they’re included to draw a female audience, especially because they’re featured so heavily in one of the trailers. They practically have an entire trailer to themselves.
There are some great new male characters, too. Best are fastidious search engine KnowsMore, voiced by Alan Tudyk (who is Disney’s answer to Pixar’s John Lasseter except he disguises his voice every time), Double Dan, an aptly named and thoroughly unsettling crime boss voiced by Alfred Molina, and the lovable sleazeball JP Spamly, (unmistakably Bill Hader who remains uncredited for reasons I don’t understand.)
Some old favorites are back, too. Lovebirds Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Calhoun (Jane Lynch) are sidelined for most of the action this time around, but they still get a cute continuation of their love story that was a major highlight of the movie’s early scenes for me.
Of course, John C. Reilly makes a very winning Ralph, and Sarah Silverman is also charming as Vanellope. These two give great performances, even though some of the material they’re given puzzles me.
Visually, conceptually, the movie does some really cool stuff. I can’t imagine a better way to dramatize the internet. I enjoyed watching people’s avatars being whisked off to different corners of the world wide web. I wish the film had pushed a bit further here, shown us a bit more of what makes the web such a diverse space. But some bits we do see are reasonably inventive.
The music is also good. I absolutely love the three songs that play over the credits in the first Wreck-It Ralph, and Henry Jackman’s score recaptures much of that same energy.
Best Scene:
As you may have gathered by now, I found the use of the Disney princesses extremely charming, much to my own great surprise. I love their T-shirt designs, but maybe even better is the way each one uses her powers at a critical moment in the film.
Best Action Sequence:
I love all the crazy stuff Ralph does trying to earn those hearts. His viral video ideas are all pretty hilarious, and it’s hard not to enjoy the randomness (and hence appeal) of some video game character from the 80s inexplicably turning up in incomprehensible places all over the internet. This part is not only fast and funny, but it’s also the section of the film that makes the best use of its premise.
Best Scene Visually:
A late, brilliant flourish in the film comes at the end when Ralph literally faces his worst self, his biggest flaws. My three-year-old was absolutely delighted with this sequence. It looks extremely cool and dramatizes an internal conflict in a way much easier for young viewers to understand.
The Negatives:
I have quite a few complaints about this film, but I’d honestly be inclined to overlook all of them if only the first third of the movie weren’t so boring. I couldn’t blame my three-year-old for getting bored because I was bored, too.
I like Ralph. I like Vanellope. I have no problem with the voice work of John C. Reilly or Sarah Silverman (one of the only people who honestly made me laugh in The Aristocrats). But the early scenes of this film failed to engage me, and I expected more from a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph. Frankly, Disney animation has been on a roll of late. Tangled, Frozen, Zootopia, even Moana. Disney seems to have entered yet another golden age, but Ralph Breaks the Internet does not live up to that standard.
It looks good, of course. Clearly painstaking care went into its production. But until Ralph decides to take Buzz Tube by storm to get the hearts he desperately needs, the movie is just not that exciting. Don’t get me wrong. Many individual moments are cute. I smiled intermittently. Nothing was nails-on-a-chalk-board unpleasant. I just found I didn’t care much what was happening. Even when a moment was good, it never made me feel compelled to watch on. I never felt truly invested in this new story. In fact, the sequel almost immediately struck me as somewhat superfluous.
Then in the third act, something even worse happened. The movie took a turn that seemed to undermine so much of the moral and purpose of the first (and far superior) Wreck-It Ralph. Didn’t Vanellope finally discover her true (and rather significant) identity at the end of the first movie? That was such a big deal. But now she wants to be someone else? I mean, I get it. As life goes on, we change. People grow apart. Sarah Silverman is not responsible for her friend’s bad behavior. But what about the other people in Vanellope’s game? It’s okay to make a change in your life. But Vanellope behaves with such unthinking capriciousness. She times key decisions rather inconsiderately, to say the least. And why was it so wrong for Ralph to leave his game in the first film? What he does this time around really is wrong, and I think that’s out of character, too. Last time, he unwittingly introduced conflict. This time, he knowingly does something extremely malicious. What he does seems out of character, not just compared to last time, but even by the standard of his behavior at the beginning of this film.
I agree that a good friend lets a friend grow, even if that means letting go to some degree. But why does a conflict that Vanellope feels within herself suddenly get shifted to a conflict with Ralph? Why does he get turned into a big monster? Maybe there is no big monster. Maybe Vanellope just has to work through some stuff. It would make more sense for her to be the one with the inner conflict that needs to be addressed. I don’t believe that Ralph would behave the way he does near the end. And I don’t see why he has to be turned into a dragon to be slain so that Vanellope can work through her crisis. The way he conquers his inner demons is really awesome, but that whole conflict feels inauthentic to me.
I’m also not sure that running away to another place because you’re bored with routine really counts as growth. The one who grows here is Ralph (and not just literally). But what does Vanellope actually learn in the end, that Ralph is a convenient friend because whenever she is inconsiderate, he will always act rashly and do something worse, so then she can blame everything on him? How does Vanellope grow?
This moral seems really muddled to me. Was any of this wacky online adventure even necessary?
Is Vanellope’s new life choice really going to work out for her? Will she fit in? If not, will she be back in the third movie, meaning that Vanellope will take two films to discover exactly what Ralph learns in the first movie?
Or what if the third movie takes a different course entirely? Is that Tron bit foreshadowing? Is this franchise all building to movie three, The Apotheosis of Vanellope von Schweetz? Vanellope balks at being controlled, and Ralph may be a little too possessive, but he is not the one controlling her. It isn’t Ralph who breaks the wheel. Playing devil’s advocate, you could even say that his bad behavior in this film points out an important thing that someone else would expose eventually (perhaps when Ralph wasn’t around to come to the rescue). If Shank is able to fix this problem, does that mean that Vanellope is unknowingly speaking through her to some higher power? In Vanellope’s world, you’re not really in control unless you’re the one writing the code. Will we learn in the next movie that Vanellope has really been a human coder all this time (like the reveal of her royal status in the first film)? If not, will she somehow figure out how to become a coder? Unless she does, the “steering wheel” problem is not going to be solved.
Also, it’s great that the movie seems to suggest that princesses should dream big, but I’m not sure I like the implication that Ralphs should dream smaller. I suppose you could say Ralph Breaks the Internet teaches girls that they can do anything they dream of, and boys that they need to learn to control themselves, that they are not entitled to control others. This is all well and good. But I don’t think these lessons make much sense forced onto the existing characters of Ralph and Vanellope. The moral doesn’t seem to grow organically from the plot of the beginning of this particular story.
My other complaint is that the big new star of the movie–the internet–is really, really underutilized. So much more could be done with this premise.
Overall:
Ralph Breaks the Internet is not bad, merely disappointing. Given its pedigree, I would expect it to be in the same echelon of 2018 animated films as Incredibles 2, and Isle of Dogs. It is not. But (though bored for much of the film), my three-year-old truly did love the ending and left the theater raving about how much he enjoyed the movie.