I got to sit on WRECK-IT RALPH 2 for a few days since the Thanksgiving Holiday rolled around. Sometimes if I think about a movie for a few days, I find myself more fond of it than my initial response. Unfortunately, this wasn’t this case with WRECK-IT RALPH 2: RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET.
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET was a sad shadow of its predecessor, lacking the heart and good story the first had.
It started off strong for about the first 30 minutes. I was getting super excited to give this movie a good review, but then it stopped being about videogames, and became about becoming a YouTube star, I shit you not.
The movie begins with Ralph and Vanellope expressing their ideals for the future. Ralph shares that he wants things to stay exactly as they are forever, while Vanellope says that she’s getting bored of life as it is, as she knows every nook and cranny of her game and wishes for some kind of change. Trying to help his friend, Ralph decides to carve out a new track in Vanellope’s game Sugar Rush, while a live player is racing with her character. Excited to see a new track, Vanellope cuts down into it in her car and ends up fighting a tug of war over the steering wheel control against the player. Not realizing that video game characters are sentient, the player accidentally breaks off the steering wheel. The arcade owner contemplates unplugging the game for good since a replacement wheel would cost more than the game makes in a year, which would mean certain death or homelessness for everyone who resides in Sugar Rush.
Ralph and Vanellope take faith into their own hands by venturing into the internet, with the intention of finding a replacement wheel on eBay. Realizing that they need dollars to pay for it, they first try to make some extra money by playing video games. When that turns out to not be enough, they start making videos for YouTube, I mean BuzzTube, in hopes to make money that way.
The story comes down to Ralph being an overly needy bad friend who fears change, when Vanellope wants to move on and race in games online. Ultimately, Ralph must learn to let go and let a person be a person, and not an object in his life.
Everywhere in between, the movie is like the internet itself on a shady website that just throws references and ads at you everywhere you look. There was so much of “LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT THIS!” There was so much shoved in our faces, it was hard to get into any of it. Even though the movie seemed in the trailers as though a giant advertisement for Disney’s website Oh My Disney!, the movie honestly would have been more fun if they just spent more time there with the Disney princesses and everything else Disney like Star Wars.
For those of you wondering about Gal Gadot, her character was kind of cool, I guess. We didn’t get to learn very much about her character.
I took note of the audience’s reactions to some of the things in the movie. They laughed the hardest at stuff we already saw in the trailer. That felt kind of bizarre. Especially that scene of the little girl in the car where Ralph overfeeds the bunny. Apparently that scene was made entirely as an extra that wasn’t a part of the movie. In fact, after the credits start, it cuts to that scene. The mom in the car asks if her daughter liked the movie, and the daughter responds with how she was disappointed that the scene that was in the trailer wasn’t in the movie, and then the rest of the scene plays out as we saw in the trailer!
A second thing I noticed with the audience: there a brief Stan Lee cameo, where there was a loud collective “aww” from the viewers. Understandably, his death is still fresh in our minds. RIP.
Really, the only thing about RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET that made the movie experience worth going to (unless you want to go be saddened by being reminded of Stan Lee), was the FROZEN 2 sneak peek after the credits! I gotta tell you, dear geeks, that sneak peek blew my mind!
Either way, your kids are bound to enjoy this movie, as a parent you may fall asleep.
It’s out now, check it out. However, you may just want to wait until it goes up onto Netflix, or possibly by that time, on Disney’s streaming service Disney+.
~Big Eyes
