‘Ralph Breaks The Internet’ is, without a doubt, the biggest surprise of 2018 for me. Not because I didn’t expect it to be good (because I totally did), but because I didn’t expect it to be great. And it is absolutely great! It is the funniest film I’ve seen all year! It is one of the sweetest films I’ve seen all year! It has several of the best scenes of the year! And it is 100% my favorite animated film of the year!
The story this time around is clever in multiple ways. One is the way that it shuts Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) out of her game and forces Ralph (John C. Really)to help her look to a larger internet world in order to get her back home. Another is the way the film uses the disconnecting of that game as a brilliant metaphor for the current issues of asylum and immigration. Something you could never notice, but it being there makes the film so much richer. Then there’s the internet itself. The whole design of the plot is an excuse to put these characters in a living version of the internet that allows for an infinite amount of site gags and clever jokes that will leave audiences in tears from laughing.
There are also some of the most clever sequences I’ve seen in a film here in quite some time. In fact, one scene involving a trip to the Disney website is about as cleverly self aware as Disney can get. You get Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and so much more out of this little excursion. However, it is the section with the Disney princesses that takes the cake. The way the film uses each of the princesses histories and turns them around to make these princesses poster girls for the MeToo movement is absolutely to die for. And then the way that they follow that up in Disney musical fashion is quite unforgettable.
Yet, even with all the fun being had, the movie never forgets that it is a story about friendship and love. You won’t just cry from laughs in this film. And for those on the brink of moving from one place in your life to another, or parents who have kids, this movie might make you a blubbering mess by the end. Which is a good and cathartic thing!
I know that there is a lot to choose from this Thanksgiving weekend, but you cannot miss this film. I don’t care if you are a family of five or a single woman with no family over for the holidays, this movie is for you. It has enough clever laughs to keep you laughing almost non stop, but manages to hit you in the heart strings or get you excited between each one of them. If you go see anything over this holiday, make it ‘Ralph’.
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