Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Rich Moore
- IMDB.COM: Rating: 7.8 (120,000+ votes); Metascore: 72 (35+ critics)
- ROTTEN TOMATOES: Tomatometer: 86% (141-164)
- TOP5 NEWSPAPERS: 89 AVG, three 4-star reviews: A.O.Scott, The New York Times; Mary Pols, TIME; Peter Debruge, Variety
For the generations of American kids and teenagers all across the modern part of the world that were growing up from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, arcade games were a lot more than just a popular pastime. Arcade games were defining childhoods, as they were the prototypes for the sort of socializing which today takes place on the Internet social networks. People who grew up playing at the Arcades regard the memories on them as something innermost, something which later – amongst other things – defined the term nostalgia in their emotional redefinition of the private past. That coin-operated nostalgia has been waiting on forever for the movie which would capture that feeling and help them reestablish connection with Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Street Fighter and the rest of the cult classic games, that is, that part of the feeling that rests outside of their own hearts & minds.
The coin they waited to be inserted – with sound effects and everything – all this time is Wreck-It Ralph, a story about a video game villain who wants to be a hero for a change and sets out to fulfill his dream, but not without causing an utter chaos along the way. In the best animated movie of the year, Disney creates its own arcade game characters for the main part of the story, but also brings the original cast & crew for extras and minor roles, like Sonic the Hedgehog and M. Bison, among many others. That way, Wreck-It Ralph works as both homage and historiographical metafiction at the same time. The sheer vastness and abundance of possibilities in adapting an idea like this enabled the creative team of artists who stand behind the project to let their imagination run wild: they themselves act like kids, constantly switching from one scenery to the next, from one epoch onto another, back and forward and then back again in no particular order – not thoughtlessly, mind you – trying to encapsulate all of the magic one Arcade had to and still has to offer. Every so often, the plot becomes a tiny bit sillier and more children-oriented, but director Rich Moore never loses the big picture out of his sight. He knows that the nos- talgia alone is not enough to immortalize his movie. Accordingly, he makes sure not to get sidetracked by all the tempting distractions, all the beams and buttons of the coin-ops. He carries out his vision by going narrow and staying faithful to his primary heroes; by excelling at this, all other pieces fall into place, just as if they were two-dimensional rectangles in the Brick Breaking game.
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