My Review of 'Ralph Breaks the Internet'

I’m always kind of iffy with sequels especially animated feature sequels. So when it was announced that Wreck-It Ralph was going to get a sequel I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I thought they tidied up the first movie quite well and having a sequel would be a stretch of the imagination. It’s probably a cash grab.

So, I saw the trailer and I was further confused because they didn’t really explain anything other than Ralph and his friend Vanellope are on the internet. They didn’t explain why or what the point of the movie was. It wasn’t very interesting but for some reason it’s been doing well in the box office for the last two weeks so it has to be good, right?

So the story picks up a few years after the first Wreck-It Ralph. Everyone is friends with one another and everything is great. Vanellope is starting to get bored of her game and when Ralph tries to fix things for her, they of course get wrecked. I guess it’s not totally his fault for a number of reasons but they are then forced to fix Vanellope’s arcade machine for a number of reasons. Conveniently, the arcade recently received a wi-fi upgrade so our heroes decide to use the wi-fi to scour the internet and find the broken piece for Vanellope’s arcade machine.

I really think that they should have just renamed the movie to “Vanellope’s Racing Adventure” or something along those lines because really this is her movie not Ralph’s. Ralph doesn’t really play a huge role in this movie other than to bring up plot points. He’s actually made into a somewhat unlikeable character in this movie. I understand his motivations but they could played up the misunderstanding between him and Vanellope’s new friend to help the audience identify with him more.

Disney really flexed their franchise muscles in this movie. They threw a ton of different franchise cameos in this movie. There were appearances from Star Wars to all of the Disney princesses. Some of the cameos were really impressive to see and they had a lot of fun jokes to go along with these cameos. There’s even a quick cameo with Stan Lee!

I also felt kind of bombarded with advertisements in this movie. They used real companies like Google, eBay, and YouTube etc. Understandably they were used to help us understand what was going on. The movie even make fun of being bombarded with advertisements on the internet, but if we’re watching a kid’s movie I don’t think you’re supposed to feel this claustrophobic.

At certain points I felt all of the Internet world was stretching the Wreck-It Ralph franchise a little far. It’s like if they did a Star Trek movie solely in the holo-deck room. It was basically a movie played out in another dimension. The big thing about Wreck-It Ralph was gaming whether it was retro or modern. They almost removed the gaming aspect from the movie altogether so that they can talk about social media, viral videos and everything internet. So I thought it was okay as a movie but didn’t seem quite right for a movie that’s supposed to be based off of a video game to dive so far away from their source material.

Overall I would have to give Ralph Breaks the Internet a six out of 10. It was okay but as a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph it wasn’t very good. If you have to go see the movie I would highly recommend watching it in the theaters in 3D. The visuals are way better than the first Wreck-It Ralph movie with a ton more going on the screen. Disney refuses to sell 3D movies in North America so this is the only time we can actually see it in 3D. Maybe this is why the movie has done so well? Otherwise I have no idea how this movie is getting so many viewers. It’s not that great of a movie.