WRECK-IT RALPH

year: 2012 voices: John C. Reilly, Jane Lynch rating: *

The most falsely promoted kid’s film since BRAVE, this has little to do with the title character, a video game villain who, like Donkey Kong, wreaks havoc atop a building while the good guy named Fix-it Felix gets all the glory. Felix lives in a nice house while Ralph resides in the city dump and isn’t allowed to party with society folk.

An interesting premise is derailed once our misunderstood hero, after sharing his troubles with a group of other antagonists including the Pac Man Ghost, wins a military award and then accidentally winds up in a game called SUGAR RUSH where everything is made of candy.

He meets an annoying little girl named Vanellope who wants to qualify in an important car race. Meanwhile Ralph's lost his medal and can no longer prove that… well... who really cares about the initial plot (a bad guy wanting to be good) because the movie sure doesn’t, getting lost in the vapid saccharine world where an evil king (who at least has a professional sounding voice-over) rules with an iron fist. Not even Felix, joined by Jane Lynch's gung-ho militant babe, can help matters. Because the main problem with WRECK-IT RALPH is the title... with all the glossy distractions, the big lug hardly matters at all.