Movie Review: Ralph Breaks the Internet: The special water (No Spoilers)

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Sorry but Deadpool still holds claim to that feat.

 The first Wreck it Ralph is honestly still a good movie, as a video game fan I love the little touches, retro callbacks and the side by side jokes comparing Arcade classics to modern gaming sensibilities and aesthetics and I really enjoyed the central idea of Ralph (played by John C. Reilly) as a Character, that even though he's a "bad guy" it doesn't mean that he's a bad guy. I also liked Vanellope (played by Sarah Silverman) as a knock back against the Disney Princess archetype and the cute little friendship she develops with Ralph as both are outsiders who find common ground. I even liked King Candy as a villain and for the whole "hit guy with glasses" bit that was really clever. All in all Wreck it Ralph was an enjoyable movie and I'm definitely looking forward to wrecking stuff with Ralph in Kingdom Hearts 3.

 I had to get all of that out of the way so that when I say that Ralph breaks the Internet falls short in comparison to the first one I don't have ravenous Disney fans out for my blood. Yeah, yeah a sequel doesn't live up to the original a sadly not uncommon story. But it's true, while the premise of the story is a good one and it does have some great moments and commentary it just sadly ends up as a less intellectually insulting version of the Emoji movie. I'm serious there's just as much product placement as the Emoji movie but it has an actual story behind it as opposed to just being a piece of brainwashing marketing, it's a contrived and drawn out story but at least it has a story.

 It takes place 6 years after the first movie (so in real time I guess?) Ralph and Vanellope are still being best buds and have a routine going on, but Vanellope is tired of the same old same old in Sugar Rush so Ralph tries to change up her course for her but it winds up with the Sugar Rush cabinet getting broken, unplugged and with the only available part costing $200 bucks on Ebay it looks like the game is going to be moved out in a few days leaving all of the Game Characters homeless unless Ralph and Vanellope use the new Wi-fi router to go into the internet, buy the part and save Sugar Rush before Fix it Felix and Calhoun (reprised by Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch respectively) lose their minds after agreeing to adopt the Sugar Rush racers and learning that, surprise, surprise adopting 15 kids was a very stupid idea!

 Along the way they encounter a group of diverse characters, most prominently is Shank (played by Gal Gadot) who is a character from the Game "Slaughter Race" who gives Vanellope the challenge that she was looking for. Basically Slaughter Race is like Christmas Town for Vanellope, so new, so different and everything she was looking for, which causes more then a fair bit of jealousy to stir within Ralph. So if they get the part delivered to the Arcade, will it really just be like old times for Ralph and Vanellope? I mean as the song goes "How 'ya gonna keep'em down at the farm now that they've seen Paree", or in this case Detroit?

 As mentioned before there's a lot of advertisements in this movie for Ebay, Youtube, Amazon, twitter you get the idea. But unlike the Emoji movie aside from Ebay and Youtube (which is weird they have a location called Buzztube which I'm guessing the unholy fusion of Buzzfeed and Youtube even though we see adds for Youtube in the background it's odd) there's very little product placement in the foreground, it's mostly just background details, which is good though still questionable but in a movie about the internet as it is today these references are unfortunately unavoidable. So at least this could make a decent time capsule of internet culture as it is today if anything else. So while it's good that the movie doesn't focus on the advertisements and keeps its focus on Ralph and Vanellope it's not a whole lot to do. While Vanellope and her thoughts of Slaughter Race is a good angle to go with Ralph has unfortunately kind of regressed as a character due to his jealousy threatening to drive a wedge between him and his best friend.

 Though you'd think that after the first movie Ralph's friend count should have gone up by a few names it just kind of feels weird. Speaking of his friends as mentioned before Felix and Calhoun were practically gift wrapped their own sub-plot with them adopting the Sugar Rush racers but it's just dropped like a lead Elephant until the end of the movie for one joke. So if you were fans of the two, liked how they got together and wanted to see more of them in this new scenario, well tough taffy you're out of luck! Also we get some jokes about gamers and modern internet references. While some were a bit on the nose I did get a raised eyebrow about some of the topics that they talked about, I won't say what they are but it will lead to the most unexpected Arnold Schwarzenegger movie reference you'll ever find aside from the Kindergarten Cop School from the first Silent Hill game.

 Now if you feel like I'm being too negative there are some good scenes in this movie and they're both focused on Vanellope. First is the one that's in all of the advertisements, where she goes to a Disney website and meets the Disney Princesses. It's easily the best part of the movie with all of these different princesses interacting with each other, talking about the overused tropes of the archetype and the "Special Water" conversation. I don't know what I just saw but I'm cool with it. Also when Vanellope finds the special water, it lead to one of the most surreal musical numbers since the Cake Song in Madoka Rebellion, as I was watching I could only think of the Manperor's wise words.

 Though aside from that, Shank's crew and the once again surprising ending I don't really have a whole lot to say about Ralph Breaks the Internet. It honestly felt a bit "by the numbers" from Disney. Which is very weird, it feels like one of those straight to video Disney sequels that flooded the market back in the late 90's early 2000's but with better writing, a bigger budget and more product placement than Man of Steel. I didn't really go into this movie expecting something groundbreaking, really I just saw this on a whim but I'm kind of in a weird place, I'm not angry I thought it was just, ok. I figure that maybe they could have gone a bit farther with the "what kids are into" angle that they were hinting at with Slaughter Race and Buzztube like maybe Ralph interacting with characters from popular games that got big because of Youtube and streamers and that, like Ralph interacting with the FNAF characters but then that'd just be going into Fanfic territory and I'm not that far gone just yet. Or at the very least give us the Felix and Calhoun subplot like they set up or something.

 I guess I was kind of expecting more out of a movie where retro game characters go into the internet, but for what I got I wasn't bored so you know just like my review of the Happytime murders this is just one of those instances where you just have to ignore the hype and make the best judgement call around, yours. But as before at least I have Ralph fighting Heartless to look forward to. Now if you'll excuse me, I've prolonged my suffering for long enough, back to Dumbluck and his gang of idiots next week.

Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.

Ralph breaks the Internet is owned by Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Warhammer 40,000 is owned by Rick Priestly, Games Workshop and Citadel.

If the Emperor had a Text to Speech Device is owned by Bruva Alfabusa.