Wreck-It Ralph Gets Two Thumbs Up and Two Ears Covered

Last weekend I was invited by Disney to see a preview of Wreck-It Ralph and I went with both kids.  It was shown in 3D so they looked hilarious in their glasses as they watched the film.  Before the feature itself, there was a short animated film called Paperman which was simple and elegant and very lovely.  I hope it’s shown at every viewing of Wreck-It Ralph so you can see it in your town.  I will confess that I shed a tear, or two.

Wreck-It Ralph itself was a lot of fun for me to watch because I grew up in the 80’s and Ralph’s 30-year anniversary of being in a video game might as well have been my own celebration of a lifetime of digital good times.  One Christmas, Santa (my parents) brought us an Atari 2600 game console.  My brother and I spent every possible second after that playing Pitfall and River Raid and Missile Command and Asteroids and whatever other game cartridges we wound up with over time.  We acquired “joystick thumb” and obsessed over the games. Before that we went to the arcade on special occasions or when my mother got sick of us and my father took us there to get us out of the house.  Those were magical, magical days.

Nothing has changed.  My own kids are obsessed with, at turns, the TV, the Wii, and their DS handheld games.  It’s an obsession we have to manage, as parents, because the games can get pretty consuming.  I prefer to use them as rewards or withhold them as punishments, but since I have a love of video games myself, I don’t mind playing with them if it’s a game I enjoy (current favorite is still LEGO Star Wars).

While I enjoyed Wreck-It Ralph (particularly Jane Lynch as the tough-as-nails military commander from a different game and the appearance of poor, gameless Q-Bert), the kids absolutely loved it.  When Ralph leaves his game and enters a first-person shooter whose mission is to obliterate viral robot bugs, the movie gets really loud, and that’s when Brady climbed into my lap and had me cover his ears.  He kept taking off his 3D glasses so that he “wouldn’t see” the scary parts.

But the scary parts weren’t too scary, and there was no gore and only cartoon violence.  With Sarah Silverman as the supporting actress (voice of Vanellope Von Schweez) there is plenty of snark, but the humor never really gets too adult for my comfort.  I would definitely recommend this movie as a family viewing experience if you have kids who are not too sensitive to loud noise, and bonus if you have a gamer in the crowd.  Wreck-It Ralph opens November 2.