In a battle between the internet and John C. Reilly, who among us wouldn’t root for the latter? Leave us IMDb.com and a few podcasts, John, but by all means, go smashy-smashy with the rest.
Having liberated arcade game characters from their rigidly ordained roles in 2012’s “Wreck-it Ralph,” its sequel, “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” sends our charmingly lopsided duo – the hulking, big-fisted Ralph (Reilly) and the glitchy pipsqueak candy-colored racer Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) – into that expansive netherworld where clickbait lurks and pop-ups proliferate.
For a pair of pixelated beings whose existence has heretofore been limited to a handful of video games, they’re decidedly not in Kansas anymore. The web of “Ralph Breaks the Internet” is a strictly PG-rated, sanitized version; there are no dark turns down 4chan alleys or face-to-faces with Infowars conspiracies. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t cruel truths that Ralph must confront in cyberspace – none more than when a crestfallen Ralph sees the responses to his popular viral video. Never read the comments.
In trading Qbert jokes for eBay ones, “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston, does more than shift the puns. If “Wreck-it Ralph” was a nostalgic “Toy Story”-like trip into ’80s arcade games, “Ralph Breaks the Internet” is more current. It’s ultimately about male-controlling impulses run amok.
Life inside the arcade has gotten repetitive for Vanellope, who’s tired of winning the same old rainbow-colored races in her game, Sugar Rush. But while the video-game characters are convening in their Grand Central-like terminal, a new plug labeled “WiFi” arrives above. “It’s either Wiffle ball or an arranged marriage,” says Ralph. Soon after, the impending unplugging of Sugar Rush (due to a malfunction) prompts a kind of migrant crisis. All of the game’s characters flee before they get trapped in the shutdown and need new, adoptive homes.