Boy are Ralph, Vanellope & Co. in for a surprise! Ralph Breaks the Internet takes our local video game characters and gives them access to the big kahuna, the World Wide Web. Thankfully, the creative force behind the first film is back, and they keep Ralph and Vanellope grounded despite the crazy new world that has just been given to them.
Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) have hit a stasis in their relationship in the arcade. Ralph is excited about this, because he’s pretty happy with his current situation. Vanellope is mostly ok, but she’s bored; she wants to branch out. Then the arcade owner, Mr. Litwak (Ed O’Neill) installs a new “game:” WIFI. When Sugar Rush needs a part to stay in the arcade on eBay (or eBoy, according to Ralph), Ralph and Vanellope take a ride into the electronic superhighway to save her game.
Animated films are best when they create entire worlds out of nothing. The first Wreck-It-Ralph film make the arcade seem like a world where you can hop from game to game on an endless series of new adventures. So the Internet is a giant version of the arcade that the directors get to create and explore. And what a creation it is, like a ceaseless metropolis with skyscrapers of various sizes depending on their popularity. In this world, Disney’s host of writers give kids some basic lessons of the internet in easy to understand ways. Some of these ways are funny, like 5 basic steps to create a viral video, or how autosuggestion for a search engine would work from a computer’s point of view. And some are really poignant, like watching the other end of a person reading hurtful comments, or how a virus can really spread fast and out of control. The biggest laughs come from Disney’s version of its own website, where the writers openly mock the princess narratives and clickbait on their own sites, culminating in the first mass meetup of princesses Disney has ever attempted.
Underneath all of this glitz and glam though is a lovely emotional arc for our two heroes. There’s no real villain in this film, just the differences between Ralph and Vanellope. Ralph likes his life currently, but Venellope is growing more and more exhausted with her 3 courses in her game. With the Internet, she finds her true love in a Grand Theft Auto type game run by Shank (Gal Gadot), who shows her a world of limitless driving. Ralph thinks that Vanellope is abandoning him and their friendship, but Vanellope is just growing up and making new friends, and new friends doesn’t mean forgetting old ones. For a kid who just moved to a new place, or has a friend who just did, this message is very sweet and easy to understand, and is explored in that clever way only Disney can usually pull off.
Or you can just be happy watching Elsa, Pocahontas, Snow White, etc giving Vanellope some pointers and trying on t-shirts. Ralph Breaks the Internet runs the Disney formula like a well oiled machine, delivering the exact results it is going for. Their next film will be Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer) and Calhoun’s (Jane Lynch) parenting tips for raising 15 hellraisers.