Disney borrows from Pixar

By ROGER MOORE
McCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE

Disney Animation takes a page out of Pixar’s well-worn playbook for “Wreck-It Ralph,” a screwball farce with a novel setting and more edge than your average Disney ‘toon.

Where “Toy Story” showed us the off-duty shenanigans of a kids’ toy collection and “Monsters, Inc.” took us behind the scenes of the bogeyman business, “Ralph” finds fun in the outside-the-arcade-game life of the characters trapped in those games, forced to play hero, pawn or villain forever. Or until the game falls out of favor and the power is shut off.

The cartoon-voiced John C. Reilly gives life to Ralph, a beast in a Donkey Kong-like kiddie game titled “Fix-It Felix.” Felix, played by Jack McBrayer, the pixie-voiced page of NBC’s “30 Rock,” repairs this wonderful apartment building for all his friends, the tenants, to live in. The hulking Ralph, 9 feet tall and 643 pounds, lives in the brick pile over by the dump. He wrecks stuff that Felix has to fix.

And this has been going on for decades.

“I’m a bad guy,” Ralph mutters. And even though “a steady arcade gig is nothing to sneeze at,” he’s had enough, he tells his video-game villains (Bad-Anon) support group. He’s skipping out after hours, finding his way to a game where HE can be the hero, win the “medal” and become beloved.

The video game universe created here is “Monsters, Inc.” detailed, and peppered with actual video game characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Pac-Man and Qbert. The filmmakers have fun with graphics and animation sophistication, from the jerky motion of the “Pac-Man” and “Donkey Kong” era to the HD slickness of today. Gamers will get a kick out of a montage showing the years pass in this one arcade, with forgotten games such as Battlezone replaced by the next big thing.