(Rich Moore, 2012)
If you have children and watch a lot of the many animated films produced by Hollywood these days, then the emotional arc they invariably follow can become wearyingly repetitive. That stock formula wherein a character learns a valuable lesson about what really matters to them while being led astray by their own basest desires or a dangerously attractive bad influence: that seems central to every kids film I see. And I see just about all of them, these days.
Still, some can deliver that formula beautifully, and some cannot. That depends on a number of different factors; the storytelling is crucial, the strength of the characters, the wit, the tightness of the plotting. Well, Wreck-It Ralph is excellent in just about all of those categories.
Set in the world of a 1980s arcade game, the film centres upon Ralph, the bad guy in a game called "Fix-It Felix Jr", a Donkey Kong rip-off. After the arcade closes each night, the video game characters live on inside the dormant machines, and it is the richly imagined world of their lives which is perhaps the film's strongest single element. Ralph, fed up with 30 years of being shunned inside his own game, decides to head off in search of some heroism. His quest leads him through violent Space Marine Sci-fi First Person shooter "Heroes Duty" and then "Sugar Rush" a candy land-set Kart Racer game, where he meets Vanellope, a "glitch" and fellow outsider. Meanwhile, Fix-It Felix, the hero from Ralph's game, is desperately searching for him so that he can return and stop the game from being declared out of order, and the Commander of the Space Marines is also in Sugar Rush, hunting an escaped Cy-Bug which Ralph unwittingly took with him.
Thats quite a lot of plot to cram into under two hours, and it means that Moore's movie zips along like one of the video games it depicts, stuffing in countless sight-gags and references to games for the adults without ever stinting on the slapstick and toilet humour for the kids. The multi-socket adaptor powering all the consoles is here revealed to house a Game Central Station, where "homeless" Q-Bert avatars beg for change and off-duty combatants from Street Fighter go to drink. There are cameos from characters from Mario, Pac Man, Frogger and many more in these scenes, and the way flashbacks are rendered in different resolutions, and some characters flicker like older game pixels are the sorts of details that give Wreck-It Ralph a feeling of a richly textured, deeply imagined world most reminiscent of the one seen in the Toy Story films.
All of that - and the sensitive, nicely judged voice work from John C Reilly and Sarah Silverman - helps immeasurably when it comes to selling that familiar emotional arc in the somewhat overstuffed, hyper-frenetic last reel.
Feeling much more like a Pixar production than any Disney film in recent memory, Wreck-It Ralph is a an immensely entertaining family film with layers and laughs in equal measure.
Showing posts with label Video Game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Game. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Saturday, 30 July 2011
PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME
(Mike Newell, 2010)
There is an attempt, somewhere within this massive, often beautiful Jerry Bruckheimer production, to recreate something of the spirit of the Romantic Middle Eastern Epics which were once a Sunday matinee staple. But that attempt jostles for breathing space with the interests of too many other focus groups and corporate partners and demographic-pandering ideas, with the end result that the whole thing is loud and busy and confusing, with some fine moments and interesting elements lost within the sandstorm of cgi and gags and action and cack-handed plotting.
Based upon Jordan Melchner's seminal platformer video game - and incorporating that, sort of, with a couple of thrilling free-running sequences and with one distinctly unthrilling cgi surf-the-collapsing-landscape scene - the plot is unnecessarily fussy and complicated. A common orphan adopted as a boy by a King finds himself blamed for the King's death and must flee with a beautiful princess, pursued by his Brothers and in possession of a dagger which allows the owner to travel back in time. It gets worse after that, and that takes a half an hour to set up. That leads to an episodic string of chases, encounters and fights, some lovely design and photography, some terrible dialogue, Alfred Molina as the comic relief, assassins who practice sorcery, lots of screwball love/hate exchanges between a hero and heroine who look good together but lack chemistry, an ostrich race, the criminal waste of Toby Kebell, Ben Kingsley sleepwalking throughout a stock villain role, and lots and lots of swords before it all ends in a big vague cgi climax and an unexpectedly satisfying resolution.
There are compensations; Gyllenhall is a convincing action star, Arterton is beautiful, Newell is a pro, never over-directing anything, and it always looks expensive and lush.
It's fun, mostly, and that might have to be enough in an adaptation of a videogame. But it could be more fun, you feel. It's almost there.
There is an attempt, somewhere within this massive, often beautiful Jerry Bruckheimer production, to recreate something of the spirit of the Romantic Middle Eastern Epics which were once a Sunday matinee staple. But that attempt jostles for breathing space with the interests of too many other focus groups and corporate partners and demographic-pandering ideas, with the end result that the whole thing is loud and busy and confusing, with some fine moments and interesting elements lost within the sandstorm of cgi and gags and action and cack-handed plotting.
Based upon Jordan Melchner's seminal platformer video game - and incorporating that, sort of, with a couple of thrilling free-running sequences and with one distinctly unthrilling cgi surf-the-collapsing-landscape scene - the plot is unnecessarily fussy and complicated. A common orphan adopted as a boy by a King finds himself blamed for the King's death and must flee with a beautiful princess, pursued by his Brothers and in possession of a dagger which allows the owner to travel back in time. It gets worse after that, and that takes a half an hour to set up. That leads to an episodic string of chases, encounters and fights, some lovely design and photography, some terrible dialogue, Alfred Molina as the comic relief, assassins who practice sorcery, lots of screwball love/hate exchanges between a hero and heroine who look good together but lack chemistry, an ostrich race, the criminal waste of Toby Kebell, Ben Kingsley sleepwalking throughout a stock villain role, and lots and lots of swords before it all ends in a big vague cgi climax and an unexpectedly satisfying resolution.
There are compensations; Gyllenhall is a convincing action star, Arterton is beautiful, Newell is a pro, never over-directing anything, and it always looks expensive and lush.
It's fun, mostly, and that might have to be enough in an adaptation of a videogame. But it could be more fun, you feel. It's almost there.
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