Alasdair had organised us going to see this at the Clifton Observatory, as part of a series of film screenings in weird locations in Bristol. It’s not necessarily the optimal setting, with gale force winds threatening to blow down the building, but it is a lot of fun.
It’s Alasdair’s first time seeing it, and it’s my second time, a good 11 years later. On Letterboxd, I’ve marked it down about a star from my rating back then - how generous a marker first-year-Sam was.
It’s still good! The animation is very effective, funny in its own right and able to get the most possible out of the contasting art forms available for it.
But the problem is, Wreck-It Ralph falls into a category of films that I tend to like, where the first act is very gag heavy but eventually it barrels towards a loud, incomprehensible third act where all sense of fun and individuality are lost as the filmmakers realise they have to stuff a lot of plot in very quickly. Unfortunately, the first act isn’t as gag heavy as I remembered it being, the the third act is much louder than I remembered too. Fair play, though, the plot is relatively well threaded - all the final elements have had their seeds planted throughout, a level of care often missing from films like this.
The thing that keeps it together, then, is that Ralph and Venellope’s relationship is genuinely quite well drawn. It is made touching through the writing and through the voice acting, and the anguished cry of a child in the audience as he realised that Ralph was going to wreck the racecar speaks to that in its own, high-pitched way.