The movie is great fun, has strong feminist role models and have Disney princesses in loungewear giving some attitude
THIS shouldn’t work as well as it does, as in essence it’s hell of a lot of product placement coated with a story about friendship and acceptance, but the cast of characters and a brace of original concepts deliver the messages with just enough heart and humour to pull it off.
Ralph (John C Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) are relatively content in their arcade existence, but the young sidekick has a yearning for broader horizons.
After an accident forces ‘Sugar Rush’ (her racing game) to be closed down - she goes on the hunt for spare parts, entering the weird world wide web.
There, both her and Ralph have their heads turned by all the trappings of broadband - whether it be google, ebay bidding wars, MMRPGs such as GTA or Fortnite, YouTube viral videos earning obscene amounts of money, or the dreaded comments section.
All the wonders of the modern tech world are here, complete with the many ways it can make you feel crappy - stretching Ralph and Vanellope’s loyalty to it’s limits.
The film’s has many triumphs - first and foremost it’s great fun, secondly it offers pretty strong feminist role models (Gal Gadot as cool-ass racer Shank is a perfect heroine for Vanellope) but it’s finest moment is the unwitting creation of a genre we didn’t know we needed so much - princesses in loungewear giving some attitude.
It’s genuinely one of the best introduction of characters I’ve seen since Jesse and Bullseye showed up.
Such a simple premise (what do Snow White, Arielle, Elsa and the gang do in their downtime?) and so enjoyable (they’re all slightly terrified of the thickly accented Merida from Brave) it would be a tragedy if this were an idea they didn’t explore further.
It occasionally falters - the timeline feels off. I couldn’t date the film - one one hand we see snapchat, screaming goats and we place it in the era of the modern internet (which the audience will be familiar with) but on the other there’s someone discovering the internet for the first time, using a first generation iMac (the blueberry ones) with dial up internet - whilst kids are simultaneously searching for replacement arcade parts on their iPhones.
It shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things - but it seemed like an odd mis-step (even if it IS a deliberate indication of the arcade owners antiquated ways).
