Wrecking em up

A Toy Story for the video-game generation, instead of having cuddly little toys that come to life when no-one is around to look, we have a bunch of arcade game characters who are free to roam around their own little world via intricately designed trains and the “Grand Central Station”.

Ralph (Reilly), as his name suggests, wrecks things. In his game “Fix it Felix” it’s his job to break everything, whilst the player controls Felix to fix all the damage caused by the big bad guy. But Ralph doesn’t want to be the bad guy anymore. He isn’t invited to any of the cool parties his “good” characters are having, and whenever anyone comes across him outside his game, they are too busy running away from the brute to even hear what he has to say.

Wanting to be fully accepted into the game characters’ community, he decides the only way would be to win a medal, any medal, that will prove that he can also be a hero for once, instead of constantly being outcast as the villain.

He stumbles across a sci-fi shoot’em up, where he meets the charismatic leader Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (the invaluable Lynch who has plenty of dry, no-nonsense one-liners in a true Sue Sylvester style) and from there after a series of unfortunate accidents he ends up in another game land where the sweets-covered Sugar Rush kart-racing game takes place. There, it turns out he would need to win that race to get ahold of his medal. Befriending Vanellope (Silverman) another outcast/a glitch from the game, the two unlikely pair form the sweetest bond to work together.

There’s the whole “be yourself” type of repetitive and tiresome message that gets jammed down everyone’s throat which marks the film’s only serious misstep. Yes, yes we get it Ralph can still be a hero whilst being the villain in the fictional game, we all need to embrace who we are blah blah blah.

But there is plenty of imagination, grand visuals, and head-spinning action here to keep everyone of all ages thoroughly entertained.