Wreck-It Ralph

Directed by Rich Moore

(PG)

***

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Like the 1980s video games that inspired it, Disney’s latest animated feature is merely light entertainment—“but fun while it lasts,” said Jody Mitori in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It even comes close to achieving its goal of appealing both to cartoon-loving kids and parents who grew up in the arcade age. John C. Reilly voices the titular character, a muscled brute who has spent his entire life inside a 1980s-style arcade game destroying things. To prove his good nature, he must win a medal, which leads him into the candy-filled game Sugar Rush, where he befriends a tomboyish drag racer played by Sarah Silverman. Even in a film of “eye-popping visuals,” the duo’s friendship provides the film’s highlight, said Michael O’Sullivan inThe Washington Post. But too many storylines and action sequences pile on, and the “needless clutter” detracts from that “kernel of genuine feeling.” Even if these characters aren’t Toy Story lovable, they’re lovable enough, said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Flaws aside, Wreck-It Ralph manages to be “a bouncy, hilarious, and heart-warming, game-trotting trip.”