Having your cake and eating it too: Discussing the somewhat troubling finale of Disney's Wreck It Ralph.

Spoiler warning... this whole essay is discussing end-of-film events of Disney's Wreck It Ralph.  Like in the first sentence, so beware!!!
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When is a Princess Story not a Princess Story?  That's the question that's haunted both of Disney's major animated efforts this year.  While Brave has gotten raves elsewhere (not here) for focusing on a young woman who doesn't want to get married, the film is at its core a loose variation on The Little Mermaid save for the fact that said princess doesn't want a man quite yet.  But despite marketing efforts that focus exclusively on Ralph (John C. Reilly), Wreck It Ralph is actually a two-pronged narrative, telling what amounts to a buddy film in which both Ralph and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) have their respective goals and desires.  The would-be glitch in the racing game Sugar Rush merely wants to race and be accepted for what she is, while Ralph merely wants a better life and for those in his game to understand that he's just playing a role, that he's not actually a villain.  The film's duel goals come to a head at the third act, when Ralph is informed by King Candy that if Vanellope races and wins, the compound effects will be the destruction of the game, the homelessness of its inhabitants, and the death of Vanellope, since as a glitch she would be left behind as the game cabinet is unplugged.  It's a stunningly powerful story turn, the idea that Ralph realizes that he must do something horrible (wreck Vanellope's race car and renounce her goals) in order to be 'the good guy'.  It's heroism in the Jack Bauer mold rather than the clear-cut heroism of, for example, Mr. Incredible.  But the film reverses itself almost as quickly, exposing said story turn as a fabricated lie and setting up Sugar Rush's ruler as a scheming villain who has brainwashed the citizens and denied Vanellope's true nature.  And what is Vanellope's true nature?  Why she's a princess of course!

Weekend Box Office (11-04-12): Wreck It Ralph sets a Disney animation record while Flight soars to $25 million on just 1,844 screens.

The holiday season started off with a bang this weekend, with three major openers, all of which over-performed or opened within reasonable expectations.  If Wreck It Ralph's (review) estimate holds, it will have the biggest three-day debut for a non-Pixar Disney cartoon ever.  Believe it or not, a regular Disney toon has never opened at or above $50 million over a Fri-Sun period.  To be fair, The Lion King's $42 million debut back in June 1994 would equal around $75 million today and Tangled earned $48 million on the Fri-Sun portion of a $67 million five-day Thanksgiving opening.  Still, with $49.1 million, Wreck It Ralph managed to top every non-Pixar animated feature that has opened in this holiday kick-off spot save Madagascar 2's $63 million opening in 2008.  It opened higher than A Shark Tale in 2004 ($47 million), Chicken Little in 2005 ($40 million), Flushed Away in 2006 ($18 million), Bee Movie in 2007 ($38 million), A Christmas Carol in 2009 ($30 million), Megamind in 2010 ($45 million), and Puss In Boots in 2011 ($34 million over Halloween weekend and another $33 million over this weekend last year). Inflation and 3D-bumps aside, this is a strong debut for a rather crowd-pleasing cartoon that should play well for the rest of the month even with heavy competition in three weeks from Dreamworks' Rise of the Guardians.  Like pretty much every major Disney cartoon since Bolt four years ago, this film is being touted as Disney's return to glory, but merely doing the numbers means that the Mouse House has a pretty big hit on their hands.

Review: Wreck It Ralph (2012) doesn't reinvent the wheel but merely reaffirms the Disney template.

Wreck It Ralph

2012
100 minutes
rated PG

by Scott Mendelson

It is perhaps slightly disappointing that Disney's latest animated feature is not so much an example of branching out so much as pouring the same drink into a new glass.  Just as Pixar's Brave (review) seemed like an attempt to fit alongside the standard Disney princess mold, so too does Wreck It Ralph  (trailer) exist as a Disney cartoon that would rather have a Pixar logo at the front.  But in the end Wreck It Ralph is a Disney cartoon through-and-through, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  It is vividly animated and generally entertaining, and it uses its video game settings as the basis for any number of clever jokes.  But truth be told the film is not really about video games, merely using the video game format as a colorful wrapping for a rather conventional story.  In hindsight its story is actually somewhat generic, not going as far off the reservation as Meet the Robinsons (review/essay) or even Bolt.  It's a witty and charming film, but it's slightly dispiriting how often it teases us only to skirt back to genre convention.

Review: Carnage (2011) is amusing, but predictable and uninspired.

Carnage
2011
80 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

There is nothing terribly wrong with Carnage, Roman Polanski's adaption of the play God of Carnage.  But it's story, which involves two couples who meet to discuss the playground injury that one child inflicted on another, plays out exactly as you'd expect it to.  It's fun while it lasts (and it's an awfully short picture), but the picture contains little insight and an unfortunate predictability, both in the actual narrative and in the casting, that it renders the final product very-nearly pointless.  Thanks to an unfortunate need to cast exactly-to-type, the film even loses much of its appeal as an acting treat.  It's not a bad picture, and it's entertaining while it's being watched, but it's almost obscenely inconsequential.