Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018, dir. Rich Moore & Phil Johnston)

The Summary: The sequel to Disney’s 2012 hit finds Wreck-It Ralph and friend Vanellope adventuring on the Internet in an attempt to save Vannelope’s game after it’s accidentally broken.

The Good: Excellent voice cast returning from the first film, with a few new notable performances. The movie features one of the funniest sequences of any movie this year. The ending will definitely tug at your heartstrings in a good way.

The Bad: A lot of the jokes are either pretty simple or pretty played out. Fix-It Felix and Calhoun have dramatically reduced roles. Lacks a great central villain in comparison to the first film (although that may not be a fair comparison).

The Review: Wreck-It Ralph was an astonishingly good movie. I know that’s not a particularly controversial opinion or anything, but I don’t feel like it is as widely acknowledged as it should be. It reminds me of The Lego Movie in that it’s a piece of what could very easily have been product placement-filled corporate garbage, but somehow managed to succeed in almost every way. From its amazing B-plot with Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Calhoun (Jane Lynch), to its brilliant third act twist and villain surprises, it really was just a masterpiece of a children’s movie. It’s almost not fair to compare Ralph Breaks the Internet to its predecessor. There’s just no way it will come out of the fight favorably. 

Taken on its own merits, Breaks the Internet is a really nice movie. It takes place an in-universe six years after the events of the first film, and life has settled down into a quiet routine for the first movie’s characters. The conflict arises from Ralph’s complacency with that routine butting up against Vanellope’s search for something new and exciting. The movie is mostly a long-form examination of the relationship between the two characters, and it gets some very powerful emotional mileage out of that core dynamic. John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman are as perfectly cast as they were in the original, and the characters have great chemistry. It’s fun just to watch them hang out, and that’s important for a movie that so singlemindedly focuses on that one relationship. 

Once they get to the internet, things slow down considerably. You already know almost every joke you’re going to see here, although they do benefit from sheer volume, I suppose. It would probably take three or four watches to catch all the jokes nestled in the background of this movie. I’m not sure I really want to, though, because most of them are pretty standard internet humor. Did you guys know that pop-ups are annoying? Cutting commentary. There is, however, one extended scenario that deserves particular comment. In a case of (apparently) synergistic corporate shilling, Disney included an extended scene at their own website where Vanellope meets the collected Disney princesses. If you haven’t heard or seen anything about this, don’t. Go watch this movie and enjoy one of the funniest, most side-splittingly joyous bits of self-referential humor in any movie this year. If you love Disney at all, you will adore these scenes, and they are worth the price of admission entirely by themselves. Even if you have seen something about this, I can assure you that the actual scene(s) from the movie are much, much better than anything they released in a trailer.

Other than those specific scenes, though, I’m left feeling a little flat by the movie, and I think it’s primarily down to its existence in the shadow of the previous film. I kept finding myself comparing it to Wreck-It Ralph, and that might not be entirely fair. I loved Felix and Calhoun’s subplot in the first movie, and here they’re relegated to bit player status, with about a dozen lines each. The movie makes very little effort to fill this gap either. There are new side characters, like Gal Gadot as an edgy/extreme online racing game character who serves as a foil for Vanellope, but none of them really has an arc or story of any kind: they’re just static characters there to advance the main pair’s plot. The conflict between the central characters’ desires is well captured and builds to a satisfying dramatic conclusion that will have more than one adult proclaiming that the theater suddenly got very dusty towards the end, but the world surrounding that conflict just seems to be a pale shadow of the one that was created for the first film. Not a bad movie by any means, and with a couple of all-time great jokes, but ultimately a bit of a disappointment, especially for fans of the first who were looking for a repeat performance. 

But do make sure you stick around until after the credits. All the way after.

The Score: