This time, the action moves onto a larger stage, as Ralph and Vanellope use wifi to escape their arcade and search for a replacement part for Vanellope's game. It's a more lightweight story than the original movie, though I'm not necessarily sure it was trying to be. It's just that the story isn't quite as moving in this new installment.
Its heart and mind are in the right place. This time, Vanellope is the focal character. The story is about her dreams and her desire for more than the narrow role defined for her. Wreck-It Ralph is part sidekick and part chaos agent, but he's not what this story is really all about.
Yet the story isn't all that deep this time around. Often, it's just a framework for jokes about search engines, eBay, farming in online games, and so forth. Mind you, the jokes are usually very funny. But the first Wreck-It Ralph was as emotional as it was funny, and that element is notably weaker here.
Among the many great jokes is an extended sequence (spoiled by the trailer, almost in its entirety) involving past Disney princesses. They're all represented here, from the ones who were hand-drawn the first time around to the newer ones who were always computer generated. The real coup here is that every single one of them is voiced in this movie by the same performers who did so originally (where those actresses are still alive, at least). It's cameos on top of cameos, and it's hilarious.
And speaking of voices, I still cannot get over the fact that Sarah Silverman is providing a voice in now two Disney movies. She's excellent, mind you -- it's just that the persona of her standup, television shows, and Twitter feed (you know, her real persona) seems decidedly non-Disney-friendly. Her rapport with John C. Reilly is a highlight of the movie (which is amazing, as standard animation practice is not to record two performers together at the same time). New characters voiced by Gal Gadot and Taraji P. Henson are fun additions to the first film's returning cast.
Ralph Breaks the Internet is perfectly fine movie, really. It's just that Wreck-It Ralph set a much higher standard that it cannot match. I give the sequel a B. It's worth seeing, but if you've got a movie-obsessed kid, you'll maybe hope they get hooked on something else.
Oh.... and a post-script to this blog entry.
My husband and I went to this movie several weeks into its theatrical run. (I lost track of this post for that long, and never got around to actually putting it up.) We both enjoyed the original movie and wanted to see the new one, but we'd hoped by waiting a bit, there might be fewer little kids fidgeting and talking in the theater. No such luck; the Sunday morning screening we saw still had plenty of kids.
There was a fun payoff for it, though. In an action-filled sequence in the middle of the film, Vanellope is buried in an avalanche of falling debris. Complete silence follows, with even the music dropping out. In the quiet, a little girl perhaps three or four years old declared simply: "she's dead." It was hilariously matter-of-fact, without concern -- a simple acknowledgement of what would happen in this situation.
This has become a running gag for us since then, when watching all kinds of movies and TV shows. It's going to endure long after I've forgotten everything else about Ralph Breaks the Internet. "She's dead."
Priceless.
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