Call it Tron for little kids. Or Toy Story for their arcade generation parents.

Disney's Wreck-It Ralph works in both directions. A story set inside various arcade video games, it's awash in references to actual iconic game figures (from Q-Bert to Sonic to Pac-Man).

But it's ultimately aimed at an audience that might have more fun playing Mario Kart if it were full of Strawberry Shortcake characters - children under 10, skewing toward girls.

Like Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph is about characters who come alive when no humans are there to see them. The plot centers on a game called Fix-It Felix, in which the gamer takes on the role of a handyman with a magic hammer, whose job it is to fix the damage done to a building by a brute named, yes, Wreck-It Ralph.

As we meet the Fix-It Felix gang, they're celebrating their 30th anniversary in the arcade. But Ralph (John C. Reilly) is pointedly uninvited to the party (for the seemingly sensible reason that everything he touches gets wrecked). Good guy Felix (voiced by 30 Rock's resident good guy Jack McBrayer) tries to smooth things over, but he too is oblivious to the fact that even arcade villains have feelings.

So it is that Ralph calls it quits and leaves his game, vowing not to return until he scores a "hero's medal." His next stop, a first-person shooter game called Hero's Duty, which seems directly inspired by the movie Starship Troopers (futuristic soldiers battle giant insects in an alien world). In his clumsily destructive way, Ralph does score a medal. But his escape takes him (and an alien insect stowaway) to the candy-coated little-girl car-race known as Sugar Rush.

Sugar Rush is home to a mastermind known as The King, who presides over the candyland race and schemes to disqualify an outcast little "glitch" girl named Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman). Kindred rejects, the grumpy Ralph and cheeky Vanellope become a team, bent on winning the Sugar Rush.

In between arcade-era "winks," Wreck-It Ralph imparts a somewhat-confusing-but-who-cares message about fulfillment and being proud of one's role in life (bad guys serve an important function - except for evil bad guys, um, let me get back to you on that).

But the voice actors are lively (there's a cute romance between Felix and a tough space Marine voiced by Jane Lynch). And, I'm not sure why, but to hear characters conversing in Q-bert-ese is to laugh out loud.

jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca

 
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