'Ralph Breaks the Internet' Is an Upgrade

Ralph Breaks the Internet is the sequel to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph.  It centers on video game characters Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), who have been bestfriends for years now, as they dare venture to the Internet, via the arcade’s newly installed Wi-Fi router, in order to obtain a part that is necessary to save Vanelope’s game from being permanently shut down.  While navigating around this wonderful, new world filled with amazing curiosities at every corner, they are helped by various Internet residents, including KnowsMore (Alan Tudyk), a search engine with an aggressive auto-fill function; J.P. Spamley (Bill Hader), a shady pop-up ad marketer; Yesss (Taraji P. Henson), a trend-setting algorithm for a popular streaming site; and Shank (Gal Gadot), a badass character of a gritty MMORPG called Slaughter Race.  However, Ralph and Vanellope’s friendship is tested when the latter begins contemplating of staying in Slaughter Race, which leads to a spike in the former’s insecurity.

Basically, Ralph Breaks the Internet is the infinitely superior version of The Emoji Movie.  Its interpretation of a world inhabited by prominent digital functions and brands is utterly amusing and thoughtful.  Similar to what Cells at Work! has done with the human body, Ralph Breaks the Internet takes the Internet and translates it into a fascinating anthropomorphic civilization.  From portraying click bait-y pop-up ads as street advertisers to rendering human users as little avatars whose digital deaths denote being disconnected from the Internet, it has been creative and witty in its depiction of the Internet’s components and culture.

However, in order to bring this about, it has to trade away the video game references and cameos that made Wreck-It Ralph remarkable.  There are still some of those, yes, but extremely minimal.  In fact, Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (Jane Lynch), who were major supporting characters in the first movie, received very little screen time.  Some fans may find this departure from the formula unfortunate.  But, in my case, I didn’t mind.  I enjoyed Wreck-It Ralph a lot, but not to the extent that it became one of my favorite movies of the year it came out.  I wasn’t really strongly attached to the original premise. Thus, I heartily welcomed the sequel’s change of pace.

The biggest selling point of this movie for me – as well as for many other fans, too, I assume – is the fact that it features a crossover of sorts of popular IPs from The Walt Disney Company and its subsidiaries – a first on the big screen.  Since one of the web sites visited in the movie is a Disney site (fittingly depicted as a mega theme park), there are cameos of various Disney, Pixar, MCU, and Star Wars characters, which, although fleeting, are delightful.  Among these, the highlight – which the trailers and stills had already given away – is that of the Disney Princesses.  Vanellope’s scenes with them are utterly hilarious and adorable.  They also have (I think this is SPOILER-y) this awesome sequence where they use their abilities, one after the other, while a snippet of their respective themes concurrently play in short successions.

Its mid-credits and post-credits scenes are also among the best of the year – especially the post-credits scene.  The subject of these bonus scenes is basically about trolling, and since the movie is about the Internet, it’s very appropriate.

All in all, I like Ralph Breaks the Internet more than Wreck-It Ralph.  I would have wanted to see more of the super-strong Ralph smashing things, but other than this, which is something trifling anyway, I thought that, at the very least, it met expectations – it accomplishes what it had set out to do.  Thus, for what it is, it has little to no failings.   Sure, it’s definitely more of the “factory assembled” kind of animated film rather than the “artistic, innovative” kind.  But nonetheless, it’s undeniable that it’s an excellent crowd-pleaser.