Inventive visualization enlivens ‘Wreck-It Ralph’

Talk about cinematic eye candy, “Wreck-It Ralph” has it in heaps—literally so, because much of the animated feature’s antic action is set in an arcade game locale called Sugar Rush, a fictive world of all sorts of sweet confections, including a candy-cane forest and giant Mentos that fall into a boiling, bubbling chemical pool and explode like dynamite!

In addition, the animated feature isn’t deficient in inventive concepts, paced by its key character—a villain in a popular arcade game who, after 30 years spent wrecking everything around him, has decided to become a good guy for a change!

The spirit may be willing, but Ralph is prevented from turning a new leaf by everyone else’s fixed and myopic expectations of him. He’s a one-man wrecking crew and has to stay that way, otherwise what would his game’s resident good guy, Fix-It Felix, have to fix?!

Conflict

To establish new parameters in his life, Ralph has to move over to another game set in the sickeningly sweet world of Sugar Rush. There, he finds himself in the middle of a huge conflict between the kingdom’s rightful princess, and the evil interloper who has psychologically and digitally entrapped her so he can be free to rule the land.

Ralph may not have planned it this way, but the royal ruckus in Sugar Rush now gives him his golden opportunity to turn good guy and hero, after all!

Truth to tell, the story’s central conflict involving the digitized princess and her captor-usurper is as old as the fairy-tale hills, so expect no surprises there.

What enlivens the movie is its inventive visualization, especially of its Sugar Rush subplot. “Borrowing” heavily and cheekily from Japanese animé and pop art confections (the captive princess looks jauntily oriental), this long section enables the film to finally come into its own!