Wreck it Ralph (2012)

In recent years I've sometimes forgotten how long it used to take for films to come out in the UK after the US. Many of last year's blockbusters even had their premières in Europe, with others being released only days or weeks apart. So in the lead up to Wreck it Ralph's release, I never really considered that I'd have to wait so long to see it. I'd watched its trailers, got excited about it, saw it released to mixed reviews but only then discovered its UK release date and felt my enthusiasm for it gradually drain away over the following months. Even the bonus of its groundbreaking preview short 'Paperman' was somewhat neutered by its release on YouTube. And to top it off, this post has been hugely delayed due to the arrival of my first child.

So it came as quite a surprise that when I did finally get to see it, I loved every minute of it. I knew of nearly every criticism that had been directed at it but that sense of expecting the worst meant that none of it really bothered me. Formulaic plot with a rift developing between the characters before making up at the end? - that may be the case but I didn't see the reason for this coming and in the end a story needs some kind of conflict. Vanellope von Schweetz was too annoying? - it hardly felt like she was in it long enough to really start to grate and you'd have to be fairly cold hearted to not feel something for her situation by the end. Sags in the middle and spends too long in one game? - None of it really dragged and the 'Sugar Rush' world was always interesting even if it wasn't really like a game (okay, I just wanted to chew the ground).

Any fear I had that this might just be cramming in game characters for the sake of it evaporated pretty quickly, as you could tell it was made by people intimately familiar with games. There's just so much to see in the background that you could never catch first time, which will make it a mandatory Blu-Ray purchase. I've heard that they started the project assuming that they had free reign to use any characters that they liked and that they would sort out permission later, which you can definitely see from how much fun they had with it. In fact the only character notable by their absence was Nintendo's moustachioed plumber - though he does get a shout out at least.

While Litwak's Arcade probably couldn't be found in the real world any more, it looked totally convincing and was probably created with the same yearning I have to see arcades popular again. Although having to pump 8 quarters into the modern shooter 'Hero's Duty' was a familiar trend from real arcades that I'd like to see the back of. I liked the fact that your main human focus in the real world was a little girl who would happily play anything, not concerned with whether the game was aimed at her. I also had to chuckle at the offensive teenage boys monopolising the day-glo pink kids racing game and ignoring the rules of 'I Got Next'.

Most of the story takes place late at night when the arcade is closed, with the characters free to travel between different arcade machines. Ryu and Ken leaving for a root beer at Tappers was probably one of my first laugh out loud moments and it's finally revealed where the bad guys go for their group therapy session. For rather obvious reasons, leaving your game while the arcade is open is a strict no-no and Ralph threatens the future of his machine in his quest for a medal in 'Hero's Duty'. Despite the name, I wouldn't say this game is really a reference to the Call of Duty series but is more of a mix of Gears of War and any modern lightgun game you can think of.

Very little time is spent in this game and while I could have stood to see more, there's not really much to it - true of almost any rail shooter you can think of. Jane Lynch's badass commander does stick around for the rest of the film though and her teaming up with Fix it Felix was another unexpected bit of fun. Her tragic back-story was hilariously clichéd but it did feel exactly like something you'd see in a game - possibly a direct reference to the Gears of War series but I haven't played past the first one to be sure.

As I said earlier, 'Sugar Rush' didn't really ruin the flow for me but I can kind of see why many have picked up on it. You do spend a lot of time here and it kind of stretches the concept of being part of a video game to breaking point. I still thought there were some very imaginative uses of sweets and candy, plus I'm a sucker for bad puns and there were quite a few here that made me chuckle. When you finally see the game in action I couldn't help but be impressed by how right they've got the feel of a karting game. I also liked their spaghetti-like representation of a game's code, which was accessed via a method all gamers should be familiar with.

I can't decide if someone not familiar with video games would get the same level of enjoyment out of it as I did. There's certainly gamers that didn't enjoy it as much as me too, which I can sort of understand if you expected it to feel more like being part of a game or have more involvement from existing characters. I think that the way it has turned out is pretty well balanced though, with plenty to interest gamers but little prior knowledge required that would alienate other viewers and an interesting story with a few surprises at its heart. I'm just happy to be in that middle ground where almost everything worked - perhaps I'm just easily amused but it just left me feeling that it was a film made just for me, right up until the gorgeous pixelated end credits.