Then however, I took the time to actually watch the film at the recommendation of several warm reviews and found to be unexpectedly good, whilst still containing obvious signs of studio mandated genericness. Quick summary of the plot, Wreck-It Ralph is a video game character trapped in the never ending monotony of being ostracised from his society for forever playing the role of the villain and being defeated by the hero of the game, Fix-It Felix. Longing for a different role in life he seeks to become the hero of another story by entering other games and earning a medal of valour of some kind. Now that SOUNDS like a pretty generic story, in fact that's literally just the plot of Nightmare Before Christmas with added 'Generic Disney Princess Personality' to the character of Ralph, but it somehow makes it work.
I think my favorite instance of design matching character has to be Jane Lynch's character of Sergeant Calhoun, the 'Samus Aran crossed with female Commander Shepard' kind of looking character who lives in a rail shooter game about space marines, it was the kind of occasion when the designers and animators seem to base the character entirely on the voice actor's appearance and physical manner of reading the lines, and as a result I had a lot of fun watching these characters. It was definitely clear to me that the artists working on this film hugely enjoyed what they were doing, I mean, there were jokes hidden within the very animation itself, I think that sentence alone should be evidence enough that not all of Disney are emotionless vampires.
Having said that though, there are a few small complaints I could make about the film, for instance I hate to say it but Ralph himself is relatively boring, he's easily the least interesting character in his own film which is a problem whenever I have to care about him and his easily fixed conflict. His story doesn't really consist of character growth on Ralph's part, it's just the fact that the civilians in his game hate him for no specific reason beyond that vague 'Nondenominational fictional racism' that too many films use. His interactions with the other characters strongly remind me of Megamind and Sully from Monsters Inc, and as I mentioned earlier his initial character arc is strongly reminiscent of Jack Skellington's virtually identical character arc in Nightmare Before Christmas in which he longs for a different purpose in life than the one he was given.
Back to the good parts of the film though, like the humour for instance. The good thing about the jokes in this film, is that they doesn't take the usual route of really dumb video game puns like those old Saturday Morning cartoons like the Super Mario Bros Super Show used to have, the jokes are all relevant to gaming concepts of the modern age and don't make any reference to outdated gaming systems like 'lives' or 'scores' or 'levels'. There are several jokes made at the expense of darker, more modern games for example and seem to glorify the older fashioned retro games of the 80's, Sergeant Calhoun in particular being a kind of Pastiche of modern gaming heroes who wear armoured suits, stick to violent methods and have unthinkably tragic backstories to justify such action, though since this is still a PG film, it doesn't go all the way with that joke.
So if you can get past the genericness of the core plot and the suffocatingly Disney-like atmosphere of the film, the characters are hugely enjoyable to watch even if they're not really on that big a journey, the art is excellent and had me wondering what on Earth they'd show me next, and the story, whilst occasionally childish and indulgent and often lacking in a concrete direction, isn't necessarily too kiddy for older audiences either, I mean I'm 19 and I went to see this film with my Dad and we both enjoyed it.
