Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - Original story gets lost in benign but overly flashy animation

10/31/2016

Wreck-It Ralph (2012) - Original story gets lost in benign but overly flashy animation

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The festive poster with kapow value for Rich Moore's Wreck-It Ralph

Ralph (John C. Reilly (Chicago (2002))), the arcade computer game character of the game Wreck-It Ralph, is tired of being a lonely outsider in his world, who only gets to smash things to smithereens. So he leaves his game to win a medal. - But his decision lands everyone else in the arcade game world in deep trouble!

Wreck-It Ralph begins as a fresh, original and really funny idea. But it later turns out to have some real problems: Sarah Silverman's (Masters of Sex (2014-16)) girly character and the villain King Candy (voiced by Alan Tudyk (Wonder Boys (2000))) are both boring, and it is as though Wreck-It Ralph gets lost in the candy world which much of it plays out in. It indulges in flashy animation for its own sake and attempts to pull an edifying story out of the mess in the end, which as a result feels cheap.

Before this meltdown, though, Wreck-It Ralph provides enough lavish and computer game-enthusiastic fun to make it worth seeing. Jane Lynch (Rio (2011)) and Jack McBrayer (Bad Night (2015)) are both fun, with the latter building on his Southern-charm trademark.

The film is written by Phil Johnston (Zootopia (2016)) and Jennifer Lee (Frozen (2013)) and directed by feature-debuting Rich Moore (Zootopia).

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 165 mil. $

Box office: 471.2 mil. $

= Box office success

[Wreck-It Ralph premiered October 29 (El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood) and runs 101 minutes. The concept for Wreck-It Ralph was developed first by Disney in the late 1980s, and was redeveloped and reconsidered several times before the film that came to be. Moore was hired based on his previous work directing animated TV-series such as The Simpsons (1990-93)) and Futurama (1999-01)). Wreck-It Ralph contains an estimated 188 individual character cameos from a wide variety of real and imaginary computer-games. The film opened #1 to a 49 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of 3 weeks and grossed 189.4 mil. $ (40.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 36.1 mil. $ (7.7 %) and Japan with 29.6 mil. $ (6.3 %). Wreck-It Ralph was the 14th highest-grossing film and the 4th highest-grossing animation of the year. Roger Ebert gave it 3/4 stars, equal to a notch better than this review. The film was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature, which it lost to Brave, and for the same Golden Globe, also lost. A sequel is in the works for a 2017 release. Wreck-It Ralph is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wreck-It Ralph?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

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Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (15-24)