'Wreck-It Ralph' review:

Jeez! This blog - and its humble author - just can't catch a break, gentle reader. Since making my hubristic turn-of-the-year pledge to update more regularly (10 times a month, said I!) I have been beset by horrid seasonal flu-like illness and (as of tomorrow) a major house move - complete with lack of internet for the immediate future. So I can't see my output improving any in the near future. So it goes. Anyway, this confluence of events also meant that I haven't yet seen award season hotties 'Zero Dark 30' and 'Lincoln'. Anyway, I did at least see Disney's latest home-grown animation, 'Wreck-It Ralph', whilst at a customarily dry 2013 slate presentation in London last month. So here's a review of that film, seeing as it's just now on general release on this side of the pond.

'Wreck-It Ralph' is to the video game arcade what 'Toy Story' was to a kid's bedroom, in that it takes place in the imagined downtime of the various game characters, after the patrons have left the arcade. Our hero is one game's villain, Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly)  - whose daily routine involves smashing up a brightly coloured apartment building so that Fix-It Felix ('30 Rock's loveable Jack McBrayer) can save the day: earning glory and the love of the game's citizens. But Ralph is frustrated by his lot. Why shouldn't he be the hero? Especially as, by some cruel quirk of sociology, his in-game villain status leaves a very real impression on his neighbours in the game. Understandably, Ralph doesn't want to be the bad guy any more. He wants adulation and sometimes a bit of birthday cake. And so he quits his game to see if he can make it as a hero somewhere else.



It's this quest that takes Ralph through various colourful and amusing game worlds, some based on actual games and others excellent facsimiles, with the most of the film taking place in one of the latter: Sugar Rush, an adorable candy-theme go-karting game featuring the genuinely cute Vanellope von Schweetz, as voiced by the great Sarah Silverman. It's after meeting Vanellope, a peppy little girl with a sad story and can-do attitude, that the up-to-now selfish Ralph starts to re-evaluate his priorities and discovers what actually being a hero means. It's a familiar arc, but it plays out here with real warmth and doesn't feel forced or hackneyed.

It's sweet and tells its story smartly, but where 'Wreck-It Ralph' really sings is with the sight gags, inspired puns and myriad of game references. It's an out-and-out comedy in an age where a lot of the classier animated movies - vintage Pixar, 'ParaNorman' - are increasingly dramas-with-jokes (not a criticism) and it converts an unreasonably high number of jokes to actual laughs. (More than most live-action comedies released in the past decade - though I realise that isn't necessarily too much of a yardstick.) It's a joy from start to finish. A little slice of happy, but without being overly saccharin... well, the least it can be considering it's a Disney movie set predominantly in a candy land featuring an adorable little girl teaching a surrogate father figure how to be a better man. But it pulls it off, without being too earnest and without smirking. It's a very genuine little movie made with obvious love of video games.

'Take This Waltz': review

Rarely does a film slip so frequently, or so drastically, between infuriating and sublime as Sarah Polley's 'Take This Waltz'. It's typified as much by tortured metaphors and on-the-nose production design as it is by moments of heartbreaking honesty and dazzling vision. Several isolated scenes are perfectly judged, by the the cast and by Polley behind the camera, though just as many demand derision - notably an early exchange in which Michelle Williams foreshadows her fear of the uncertainty wrought by ending her marriage by describing her unease of being "in between things" during airport connections. The metaphor itself isn't miserable, but no room is left for interpretation or reflection and it gets worse when the same metaphor is picked up - and again discussed in detail - later on.

Though there are just as many great moments, the best involving Seth Rogen, as Williams' husband, and his myriad of emotional responses to the inevitable end of his marriage, including a tear-jerking reveal concerning a "long-term joke". Comic Sarah Silverman also turns in a credible dramatic performance as Rogen's alcoholic sister, though Williams' handsome extra-marital love interest is certainly the film's weak link, as played by Luke Kirby. But this is, for the most part, a showcase for Williams' significant acting talents and it is she who carries the film for the most part, with the other three principal cast members operating in her orbit.

Perhaps best of all is the judgement free way Polley, who also wrote the screenplay, depicts the end of a marriage where neither party has done anything particularly wrong. It's suggested that Rogen's guileless husband has neglected his wife sexually and that there relationship has became comfortable at the expense of excitement, yet overall the end of his marriage is tragic because it comes without much obvious cause. It's also complicated by the idea that, perhaps, Williams will live to regret her decision at some point in the future. Williams wants to be able to feel that early excitement again with somebody and knows she cannot rekindle that with her husband (however much she tries), but that's it: they still basically love each other. Whether she will ever be as comfortable with Kirby, we shall never know, though it's implied that both options may ultimately lead to the same bitter-sweet place.

Whether or not the decision to leave her husband is worth the gamble is the ultimate question posed by 'Take This Waltz', and happily it isn't anywhere near as flippantly 'Dead Poet's Society' as its title may suggest. Whether or not Williams embraces her impulses and takes life's confusing, emotionally turbulent, uncertain invitation to dance, Polley's film is smart enough, and sensitive enough, to make us question that desire and identify with the character's most prosaic, a-romantic concerns.

'Take This Waltz' is out now in the UK, rated '15' by the BBFC.