A Worthwhile Retro Romp In WRECK-IT RALPH

WRECK-IT RALPH (Dir. Rich Moore, 2012)
          
It’s not the first time that the great John C. Reilly has been animated - Jake Kasdan’s WALK HARD featured Reilly’s Dewey Cox character dabbling in psychedelics with the Beatles bringing on a YELLOW SUBMARINE-style hallucinatory sequence (“I like being a trippy cartoon!”), and Reilly was the sole comic relief as a scared stitch-punk in Shane Acker’s dreary 2009 sci-fi CGI-concoction 9 - but in WRECK-IT RALPH, it’s the first time he’s been properly animated with such purpose.

Reilly lends his voice to the title character, an oafish villain in a Donkey Kong-ish video game called “Fix-It Felix Jr.,” who decides during his game’s thirtieth anniversary that he doesn’t want to be the bad guy anymore. 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, also appropriately animated, voices the games’ hero, who is constantly celebrated by the tenants of the apartment building for fixing what Ralph, uh, wrecks.

The game is located in the fictional Litwak's Arcade, alongside other parody/homages to classic ‘80s video games, such as the violent war game “Hero’s Duty,” and the seemingly set in Candyland go-cart game “Sugar Rush.” There are also many amusing cameos from real game characters, including Frogger, Q*Bert, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Clyde, the orange ghost from Pac-Man.

Told that he’d have to win a medal to be accepted by the residents of his game, Ralph leaves through the wires of “Fix-It Felix Jr.” to the arcade’s master power strip called Central Game Station, where all the various video game characters interact with one another after the establishment closes, in a TOY STORY style (not to mention the similarities to the world where cartoon characters live among us in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?).

There’s also a bit of PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO happening like when its noticed that Ralph is missing from his game and the arcade manager (voiced by Ed O'Neill) puts up an out of order sign. Since this means that the videogame is broken and will be unplugged, Felix goes after Ralph.

In one of the funniest scenes, Ralph tries to get a medal in “Hero’s Duty,” ruled by the stern Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun (Jane Lynch), and succeeds despite how chaotically over the top the game is. Ralph exclaims: “When did video games become so violent and scary?!!?”

In the next game Ralph hits, “Sugar Rush,” his medal is stolen by Vanellope von Schweetz, voiced by comedienne Sarah Silverman, who's plagued with a programming code glitch which makes her as ostracized in her video game world as Ralph was in his.

Silverman's Vanellope has a persona tailored to her patented cute snarkiness, and her penchant for crude bathroom humor - her riffing on the name of the game “Hero’s Duty” (sounds like ‘doody,’ right?) gets some good mileage (“Why did the hero flush the toilet?' ‘Cuz it was his DUTY!”), and she and Reilly exude likable chemistry bouncing off each other in their exchanges, with both comical and emotional impact.

In several smaller parts that stand out, Mindy Kalling has a few choice moments as a racing rival of Silverman's, as does Alan Tudyk as King Candy (the film's real bad guy), and is that Skrillex putting in a cameo as the DJ at Fix-It Felix's 30th anniversary party? Why yes, it is.

The sprightly, inventive, and neatly nostalgic WRECK-IT RALPH is one of the few recent animated kid’s films that uses pop culture referencing to its advantage, with genuine affection towards its inspirations. When Reilly's Ralph realizes, and says touchingly, that ‘retro’ doesn’t necessarily mean outdated and unnecessary, it can mean that something’s “old but cool,” it’s obvious that director Moore (who helmed many classic Simpsons episodes), and screenwriters Phil Johnston (CEDAR RAPIDS), and Jennifer Lee honestly feel the same way.

Whether they grew up in the age of 8-bit, or have been weaned on the high resolution graphics that dominate the game world now, folks of all ages should take to the worthwhile romp that is WRECK-IT RALPH. 

It looks like Disney, whose 52nd feature-length animated film this is, has taken more than a few cues from Pixar (including having a charming animated short play before the movie - John Kahrs’ “Paperman”), and made, via a mixture of hand drawn and CGI, a much sharper and hipper film than their last few features (I barely remember TANGLED or THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG).

It’s good news indeed that the Magic Kingdom’s movie makers can still mazimize on a promising premise, get so many laughs and thrills out of it, all the while poignantly pulling the heartstrings. It goes a long way to make up for the kind of crap that too often passes for family entertainment these days.

*Cough* “Hotel Transylvania” *Cough*.

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FLIGHT: The Film Babble Blog Review

FLIGHT (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2012)

With its disaster movie tension and tone, Robert Zemeckis’ first live action film since 2000’s CAST AWAY (and first R-rated movie since 1980’s USED CARS) comes on at first like it could be a reboot of the ‘70s AIRPORT series. Albeit a more edgy version, as we witness pilot Denzel Washington snort a few lines of cocaine before take-off, and drink vodka while in flight.

Despite the drinking and the drugging, when the airplane’s machinery malfunctions Washington is still able to successfully make an emergency landing, after the stunning maneuver of flying the jet upside down to halt the dive. Washington’s skills saves 96 of the 102 lives (or “souls” as he says it), and he’s initially hailed as a hero, but his hospital toxicology report could get him lifetime imprisonment for manslaughter.

As he’s recuperating, Washington tries to quit drinking and throws out all his liquor and beer. This can’t help but be comical as the supply of booze at his family’s farmhouse in the countryside of Georgia, where he’s hiding from the media, is so huge that he keeps finding more to dispose of.

Washington’s sobriety doesn’t last long; he drops off the wagon right after a morning meeting with Bruce Greenwood as a airline union rep, and Don Cheadle as a Michael Clayton-esque fixer-lawyer who is a little concerned about a certain blood-alcohol-level report. Although Cheadle is confident that he can suppress it, Washington relapses big-time.

Again, the scenes with Washington dealing with his alcoholism can’t help but be comical as we see him guzzle from a big bottle of liquor in the parking lot of a liquor store, and driving around Atlanta with a can of Budweiser in his hand. It seems like Washington spends most of the movie trying to out-drink Nicholas Cage in LEAVING LAS VEGAS.

Washington falls in with Kelly Reilly, who he met at the hospital, as a recovering heroin addict/hooker, but it’s obvious that she’s on a better path to getting her life back together than he is by getting a new job and going to AA meetings. Reilly tries to get Washington to attend a meeting with her, but he walks out half-way through. Our disgraced hero’s behavior gets even worse when he pays a drunken visit to his ex-wife (Garcelle Beauvais) after Reilly leaves him.

While Zemeckis, actually a longtime pilot himself, is a former Steven Spielberg protégé his use of music here has a Martin Scorsese-style specificity. This is most on display in the cameo by the always hilarious John Goodman, who should cameo in every movie, as Washington’s drug dealer who struts through hallways to the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil.” Washington gets Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” as his strutting song when all he’s coked-up yet still smooth, and Reilly gets the Cowboy Junkies’ cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” to serenade her when she shoots up in an early scene. 

I dug how gutsy FLIGHT was for most of its lengthy running time (2 hours and 18 min), and was highly amused by Washington’s cocky manner of talking around people (“Don’t tell me how to lie about drinking, I’ve been lying about drinking my whole life!”), but the film hugely falters in its concluding scenes that contrive to give this appealingly un-redemptive character redemption.

Sorry if this is a Spoiler!, but in the climatic hearing, in which Washington gets questioned by Melissa Leo as an understanding federal inquisitor, I was rooting for the guy to get away with it all, like folks often do in this cruel world. Is that what screenwriter John Gatin (REAL STEEL - that’s right) wanted folks to feel? Like, yeah we know Denzel has substance abuse issues, but, da-ham! Look how good he looks even after a rough night, and he did save the majority of passengers on that doomed flight, so why not let him off the hook?

In the end, the well made FLIGHT enjoys partying with Washington so much, that its punishment of him doesn’t really fly.

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The Epically Entertaining But Empty CLOUD ATLAS

CLOUD ATLAS
(Dirs. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, & Tom Tykwer, 2012)

Early on in this fantastical blend of seven scenarios, Tom Hanks, in probably the most ridiculous-looking get-up of all the characters he portrays here, plays a cockney gangster turned author who throws a snooty literary critic over a high-rise balcony to his death at a book release party because of a bad review.

It’s a funny gutsy scene, even though it’s so transparently saying ‘screw you haters! This is a big ass powerhouse of a cinematic experience that will throw you off a ledge whether you want to go with it or not!’

To its credit, especially with its bloated almost 3 hour running time, I did largely go with the flow. The Wachowskis, best known as the masterminds behind THE MATRIX trilogy, and Tykwer, best known for RUN LOLA RUN, have taken David Mitchell’s best-selling award-winning 2004 novel, and made it into a mega-movie for all genres.

It cuts back and forth through the various story-lines, sometimes with imagery morphing from likewise aesthetics in one shot into the other. With a cast including Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, and Doona Bae playing multiple roles in cut-up centuries-spanning sequences, the film takes a gaggle of genres - i.e. dystopian sci-fi, post-apocalyptic drama, ‘70s conspiracy thrillers, British comedy, historical mystery, etc. - and puts them into a grinder, and they all come together to form epic entertainment.

Some storylines work better than others, and often the big cosmic gist of it all, you know, that everything ever is connected and that little acts of kindness can ripple through time and affect the future, didn’t really gel like I believe they were intending, but the pure visual splendor, along with the larger-than-life personalities present, still worked wonders.

Possibly Broadbent’s bits were the most likable. Whether as a fuzzy codger of a composer conniving to take credit for a supposedly brilliant piece of music called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet,” actually written by a suicidal gay musician (Whishaw, no stranger to mixed-up mashes of movies as he was one of the Dylans in Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE), or as a present day heavily-in-debt publisher who gets wrongly committed to a nursing home by his brother (Grant), Broadbent’s energy and comic timing made a bigger impression on me than anyone else.

That’s not to say that there are some fine stand-out performances, as Hanks pulls off all his parts with ace acting, Berry puts in her best work since MONSTER'S BALL, and newcomer Bae has an emotional glow to her that fits right into the film’s absorbingly colorful palette.

Often in CLOUD ATLAS, the actors and actresses are unrecognizable because of intense makeup transformations that their change races, genders, and ages. Mostly the effect works, but there are instances that may provoke unintentional laughs when, say, first seeing a heavily freckled Susan Sarandon as an aging Southern Belle, or a Berry as a Blonde German woman. There were a lot of gasps at the screening I saw at the end credits montage that revealed who played what character. One thing is for certain: this film will undoubtedly get an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup.

As much as I was awed by what the Wachowskis and Tykwer put up on the screen, there was a bit of emptiness to the lavish proceedings that was hard to escape. Like in a conversation where you realize that somebody is only pretending to say something deep and meaningful when they really don’t have any new insight to share. Still, the ‘it’s all a show’ mentality makes for some spectacular movies, even if they are the equivalent of big junk food feasts.

Like many of those unhealthy feasts, CLOUD ATLAS is crammed full of empty calories, but that’s probably what makes it so undeniably delicious.

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