Ralph Breaks the Internet
Ten Second Review: Just as fresh as the first film, Ralph Breaks the Internet is a beautiful visualisation of the Internet that takes you on a fun journey through a the digital world. With a nice moral for kids, the film puts in a few jokes just for older audiences too.
Wreck-it-Ralph is back and he's in a bigger arena than before! He's moved from his arcade into the internet and him and Venelope will have to go from website to website to save her game from being scrapped.
I really enjoyed the first film in this franchise but I wondered if its focus on classic video games might have turned some people off. If you don't like games or don't get the references, you might not enjoy it as much. While that proved not to be case, this one's focus is on something much more ubiquitous in our society: the Internet. They really attempted to try and capture the feeling of being inside the internet and by and large I truly believe they succeeded.
The film starts 6 years in from where it left off. Ralph and Venelope have been living in their games during the day and travel around the arcade at night. The arcade is changed forever as a new thing is plugged in when the owner gets wifi but nothing happens and the characters of the games continue in with life. Ralph loves his life but Venelope feels that it has gotten a bit stale and safe but then tragedy strikes. The steering wheel to her game breaks and the one a young girl found on eBay is too expensive so her game will be scrapped at the end of the week. When the new internet is turned on, Ralph and Venelope will have to venture into the World Wide Web to find the steering wheel and have it sent to the arcade.
To be perfectly honest, most of this review will probably end up as just busing at how much I enjoyed this film. From beginning to end it felt just as fresh as the first film but by going somewhere completely different. It was by no means the same story, setting or moral and I couldn't be happier they didn't just repeat it to make a quick buck. What it ends up being is a fun and entertaining film with a great moral for kids about friendship.
The first thing I have to mention is how great the visualisation of the internet was. There is a great video essay by the YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting where he looks at how we present messaging and the internet in film. While how we present text and messaging has changed dramatically and shows like Sherlock have made this look classy and sleek, the internet is still not often successfully visualised. Tony, the man behind the video makes mention of the rise of desktop films who use screen recordings of web-browsers to show this but this is literally showing you the internet not really visualising it in the sense of presenting what being on/in the internet feels like. This film does it and does it well. The flitting from website to website, the hidden advertising executives pushing content to certain audiences, and the behemoth websites towering over the tiny rundown ones all designed and visualised as a cohesive world. I'm sure I could watch this film several more times and still catch little things each time that I had missed on previous viewings. It also continued on from the first one of jumping from the digital to the "real" world which was a nice thing to keep.
I could honestly just rattle on about all the nudges, winks and references but it would actually just spoil seeing them for your self. Instead I'll move to talking about how enjoyable the crossovers were. From the different websites to the all the interactions with a host of Disney properties, the format of the film was such a great way to visit a wide variety of things that can be found on the internet (while simultaneously using these characters as a way to poke fun at the internet and Disney itself). I think I'd be interested in a spinoff show with the Disney characters interacting like they do in this film. Maybe that'll be a good one for the new Disney streaming service.
The other thing i'd like to say about this film is about how nice the moral is for children. The central problem in the film is Venelope feeling tired of her game and wanting something different and the film uses this to tell a story about friends being able have different dreams while still being best friends. It tries to explain that you can live apart or have separate goals and still be very close to each other and this feels like a nice message for a film about the internet.
I really enjoyed this film. I'm sure a certain amount of people we feel like it doesn't talk directly enough about the dangers of the internet but in a film of this kind and length, the nods towards those darker areas are enough. It was sweet, fun and quite easy to watch with just enough content to be interesting but not an exhausting watch. It's not a Christmas film but it's certainly a great film to see over the Christmas period!
