Stars: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Gal Gadot, Taraji P. Henson, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch
Director: Rich Moore and Phil Johnston
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
The Lego Movie remains a film that I love, but it's not one that I am comfortable with my adoration, and it's admittedly not a movie that I revisit as often as I would have guessed (in many ways, I think its sequel The Lego Batman Movie might have been its superior). One of the reasons for this is it's about as close as you can get to a film just turning into a really good commercial. The reality is that in an era of cross-merchandising and endless franchises, pretty much every major blockbuster feels a bit like a commercial, something that comes with continual expectations to buy more product (whether it's merch, toys, or just more tickets to future films). While watching Ralph Breaks the Internet, yet another sequel from the world of Disney, I couldn't stop thinking about this hyper-commercialization of film, and whether or not it can coexist with artistic integrity and quality filmmaking, as Ralph tests this theory without exactly breaking it in a way I never really felt was challenged during the Lego franchise.(Spoilers Ahead) Before I try to untangle that convoluted sentence, let's go over what the movie itself involves. The movie picks up relatively soon after the end of Wreck-It Ralph, a movie I liked more than I remembered (I reread the review before putting up this one), with Ralph (Reilly) & Venellope (Silverman) both best friends who spend their days being video game characters and their nights hanging around the arcade, having the same adventures over-and-over. They both like their lives, but Venellope wants something more, and when Ralph accidentally breaks her game, they have to venture onto the internet to try and get Sugar Rush fixed. Once there, Venellope finds a racing game called Slaughter Race and befriends the game's leader Shank (Gadot), who wants her to join the game, which Ralph doesn't like because he'll lose his friend. In the end, after Ralph sabotages her chances of joining Shank's crew, they decide to part, having a long distance friendship where they are both fulfilled in their personal lives, understanding that they are strong enough in their relationship to still be friends (without the convenience of spending every day together).
I was struck when watching the film that this was the appropriate ending, one that is pretty bittersweet but nonetheless is a good way to end the picture. Most Disney films would have had Ralph also move to the internet, but the filmmakers show enough spine to give it the ending the story deserves, which was really worthwhile. But the film that precedes it feels too commercial and instantly-dated for us to really care that much about the ending. While the first film features spoofs on everything from Call of Duty to Donkey Kong, this movie goes with real-life versions of things like Google, eBay, and Pinterest, as well as features a mid-film segway into the world of Disney that just feels, well, yucky.
The concept is strong here-we have Venellope, herself a Disney Princess of sorts, meeting all of the major Disney princesses in a funny spoof of all of the previous films' characterizations of them. There's an hilarious self-jab where they list all of the horrible things these women (Snow White, Rapunzel, Tiana, and the like) have in common, but after a while it feels pretty cheap. These women come from movies that stand up on-their-own (Beauty and the Beast, for example, is one of Disney's greatest achievements), but here they serve as plastic cardboard props, a well-dressed super squad meant to add some pop culture cache to a sequel that is dragging and continually repeating the same story beats only an hour into the picture. Ralph Breaks the Internet fails where the original succeeded in large part because of this need to make it feel like a commercial (why the hell didn't they just have Ralph & Venellope go to DisneyWorld since that's clearly what they want the audience to do). I like Disney, and am not impervious to its commercial charms (I, too, want to go to DisneyWorld), but Ralph stops being a movie at some point and just is a gigantic billboard to buy the product of its studio. Considering that Incredibles 2 also lacked a similar magic to its first film, and we're now heading into Year 2 of Disney's "perpetual sequels" (say hello to Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2), one has to wonder if this breaks, and Disney is left with oversaturated product that is too banal & repetitive for its audience to care about.
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