Ralph Breaks the Internet

RATING: C-

Ever since it was announced that there was probably going to be a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, most of us were pretty excited. Wreck-It Ralph was one of a couple excellent Disney Animation movies that *almost* got lost in the shadow of Frozen (the other being Big Hero 6). It was a quite creative movie with strong character development arcs and plenty of action, humor, and fun video game references. 

From the outset, it's admittedly not a movie that necessarily needed a sequel; but given how well they were able to pull off a tough concept about video game characters coming to life and living in a giant surge protector and traveling between games, I had hope that lightning could strike twice here. 

This time, instead of staying strictly in the gaming world, the film introduces our characters Ralph and Vanellope to... the Internet. The owner of the video game store sets up a wi-fi connection there, and due to Ralph and Vanellope needing to get a "part" for the latter's game Sugar Rush following an incident which leaves the game unplugged, they end up travelling there... and getting a lot more than they bargained for. As does the viewer. 

There is a *lot* to unpack here, so let's cut to the chase--this movie is not that good. It is a perplexing big step down from the predecessor. There are multiple reasons why; but there are two critical ones that stand out above the rest. Let's start with Ralph himself. Rarely have I seen a character regress as badly as he does in this sequel. For one thing, he's oddly more useless action-wise here. Remember, he has "freakishly large hands," as Vanellope called them once before--and those actually have quite a few good uses. But he scarcely uses them at all, except for towards the beginning. He doesn't do much "wrecking" in this movie, if you will. 

But the real problem is Ralph's character development takes a huge dive. He's quite insecure about his friendship with Vanellope for some reason--and this ends up being a major plot point. And while this does lead to a lesser-used message about friendship (which is still delivered without subtlety at all), we have to deal with Ralph making some shockingly bad decisions just to try and save his friendship and keep things going his way. Ralph had issues in the first movie too, but they felt more justified because of all the abuse he was taking. But he still grew as a character, and learned to become quite content with his life. His new issues in this movie are way more unjustified, and often feel out-of-character. (Unfortunately, Vanellope's not free of dumb decisions either. Basically, there are a lot of dumb decisions made by characters in this movie.) 

And that issue of Ralph's character taking a nosedive leads directly to the second major problem with this movie: the final act. Obviously, not too much can be said here without a spoiler warning. But I will say this: there are some parallels with the first movie in terms of Ralph's actions accidentally causing chaos, only this time... there is no big plot twist regarding the villain. Instead, we're given one of the dumbest climactic acts that Disney has ever written. There's potential for massive stakes, but it all gets shot as the focus becomes more on the main characters instead of the implications of what's happening around them. 

But there's plenty of other problems with this movie. They kind of ignore the rules of the previous movie at times; Fix-It Felix says he'll cover for Ralph during the day while's gone in the Internet. But wasn't his absence during the day what caused the game to almost get unplugged last time? And Vanellope is considering joining another racing game called Slaughter Race (basically a PG post-apocalyptic version of Grand Theft Auto... I think?), despite the big deal the last movie made about "game-jumping." 

And then there's the "Disney" section of the Internet, which feels kind of shoehorned in. I'm a little conflicted here, because there's a few funny jokes in here--namely the Groot cameo. But this is part of where the movie loses focus for a little bit, especially once the Disney Princess team-up happens. Obviously some will enjoy that part; not really my cup of tea, though. But I could've probably overlooked it a bit more if it hadn't led to Vanellope having a silly musical number. Yup, that actually happens. 

Also, if you had any trouble wrapping your head around the concept of the first movie... you're gonna have a bad time here. Remember, this is basically an anthropomorphic of the Internet. And though much of what you see your brain can probably accept in the moment, when you think about questions like how in the world is this Internet world interacting with the real world, and how can our video game characters even really be here... it kind of blows your mind a bit. 

After all this, it may seem amazing that there is anything positive to say about this movie. But there actually is some funny stuff in this movie. Despite the overwhelming nature of this virtual Internet world, it's actually not that bad during the first half. There's amusing characterizations of a search engine and an algorithm. And there's also just some amusing Internet jokes/references. Also, the car chase that takes place in the "Slaughter Race" game is actually pretty fun. Even though the film can feel implausible at times during that first half, it's really not until the second half that things really start to go truly off the rails. (And when they go off the rails... boy, do they ever.) 

This is one of those movies that I didn't dislike too much at first despite the ludicrous final act and Ralph's character regression, but the more I thought about other issues with the movie, the more it infuriated me. I don't know what I'm more confused by: how the same director/writer who made the superb first movie gave us this for a sequel... or how this movie actually got well-received. But then again, I'm also among the minority of people who didn't care for Frozen and thus isn't interested in the upcoming sequel either. So what do I know?