Wreck-It Ralph
A review by Josh Bostic
Hello, nostalgia! Marketers, filmmakers and every business that targets the valuable late-20s/early-30s demographic has been playing on all of our childhood dreams lately. Not such a big deal because, well, nostalgia is, by its very definition, enjoyable. The film opens with an old school 8-bit arcade and we get a nice, short montage about the arcade’s changes throughout the year. Some familiar brand-name games are included (a sure nostalgia inducer for my age group) but we get the occasional no-name game meant to reflect some of the popular games from the 80s.
After the arcade closes, all of the characters come to life! They transfer to Game Central Station (modeled beautifully after Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, ticket booth included) and can spend time back and forth between other game worlds and interacting with other game characters. They transfer through the power lines and, in a delightfully played joke, the bad guys get stopped by the “security”, which is the surge protector. Hah. At one point, via an MTA-style ad, Sonic the Hedgehog warns that if you “die outside your game, you can’t come back.” This was a pleasant and natural way to inform us of the stakes. Some familiar characters included Q*bert, Pac-Man, Bowser, Chun-Li and Frogger.
Wreck-It Ralph attends a “Bad Guys Anonymous” meeting and we discover the central problem – Ralph is a good guy at heart and he doesn’t like the way other people perceive him. He believes that, if he wins a hero’s medal, his peers will see him as a good guy. While this provides some interesting scenarios to play out during the next hour and a half, I ultimately found it dissatisfying. Ralph has no characteristics that make him even slightly unlikable – it’s everyone else that has the problem and has to change to adapt to him. No matter, as there is plenty enough jokes, action and nostalgia to keep you distracted.
Ralph meets Vanellope, a character in “Sugar Rush”, a candy-themed racing game that I’m surprised isn’t real. They create a bond and learn that they need each other – no one sees her as a hero either, but not because she’s a bad guy. It’s because she is a “glitch” in the game. Their relationship teeters on the edge of romance but never quite crosses the line – Vanellope is portrayed as a young teenage girl. I appreciate this choice. It made for a more tangible experience for Ralph – he never needed love, just acceptance. In fact, Vanellope really accepts Ralph from the first moment and never seems to be frightened of him, something everyone else surely is. Another plot twist is thrown in with a “renegade” character that has implanted himself in a game that didn’t belong to him – unnecessary, and it distracts from what we found really interesting (namely, the relationships between bad guy vs good guy and what that really means).
This was a Disney film, not a Pixar project. Based on that fact, my expectations were a little lower. This worked out well for me, as I was able to walk in with a clean slate and not be predisposed to expecting greatness. It’s a good film, but in the way that a roller coaster was good. I enjoyed the ride, but it wasn’t life changing. I would be remiss without at least mentioning the stellar voice acting here – Jane Lynch, Sarah Sliverman, Jack McBrayer and John C. Reilly. They really bring some life to these characters, especially Sarah Silverman.
One final note – the film’s opening animation, Paperman, was simply amazing. This short cartoon nearly had me in tears – it’s the tale of a boy meets girl on a Chicago style L-train, but they are separated, and he is left only with a piece of paper with her lipstick imprint. He seems depressed, until he sees her through a window across from his high rise. Try as he might, he is unable to get her attention. No matter, the paper has a mind of its own. Simply beautifully done animation with no vocal narrative. The story is carried completely by the animation. I can only hope for such a timeless serendipity in my own life.
Eventually: Although it is a fun and enjoyable ride, Wreck-It Ralph has no attributable character arc and the rest of the cast are left to bring about change in this story. Paperman, the film’s opening cartoon, makes it worth going to see it in theaters now.
Ruby Sparks
by Josh Bostic
A writer imagines his perfect dream girl…and then she comes to life.
The film begins with Calvin (Paul Dano), a writer whose success only further complicates his loneliness, having a dream about a girl that he is writing. Her name is Ruby. In the first shot, we see a beautiful sun that is overshadowing Ruby’s face – a nice touch, because it parallels Calvin’s blurred vision of Ruby. His hotly anticipated novel about the titular character is in standstill. He can’t write another word about her, because he is in love with her. Calvin’s obliviousness to the finer details of love and women assure that he cannot go a single step further in writing his dream girl.
Alas, she becomes real. Nevermind the details, writer and star Zoe Kazan surely didn’t. And that’s no criticism. Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris of Little Miss Sunshine fame, quirkiness appears around every corner. However, in similar fashion to Little Miss Sunshine, it never becomes the reason for the film’s existence. One can’t help but compare this to Stranger Than Fiction, where Will Ferrell’s character is imagined by a writer and her writings alter his life. In that film, the writer and character do not meet. Here, they not only meet but fall in and out of love.
Zoe and Paul Dano have some real chemistry on screen. Easy, they dated – as they say – IRL. At one point, Calvin’s brother tells him to “write what you know”. What Calvin really wants is to know what he writes. It’s a universal language and, I would argue, the point of existence in life. I recently had a disagreement with a few friends over this fact. Their contention was that people are not designed to be monogamous, but to be polyamorous. Sexually, one could see an argument for that. Emotionally, however, most people have a desire to share the most intimate moments of life with one person that they can count on and trust. Calvin really wants this.
Although the ending can be seen coming from the depths of space, it delivers. Calvin has learned an important lesson, and one that spoke to me personally. Calvin learns that no one can meet a guy’s unreasonable ideals of a perfect woman and that manipulating someone to meet those impossible expectations leads only to misery. As Calvin wrote about Ruby, she changed. I believe it is a testament to our own ever-changing lives. It’s as if we write our own stories every day as we add to or take away from. We imagine our own Ruby Sparks and then write them out of our own lives. Here’s to hoping they come back on their own when we do.
Vivaciously – Watch this film expecting to explore the dynamics of a writer’s relationship with his characters and how we can apply that to our own relationships with the characters in our own lives.
Adverb the Noun 