This was the cutest fucking movie I have seen in a long time. It was almost unbearably adorable.First, it started with this beautiful short called Paperman, about a guy who meets a girl on a train platform when the wind blows one of his papers into her face, leaving a perfect lipstick impression on it. They share a giggle, but then she boards a train before he can talk to her. At his boring office job, he sees the same girl in a building across the street but he can't call out to her without drawing attention from his boss. So he makes dozens of paper airplanes, launching them across the way to try and get her attention.
Super super cute. The whole thing is black and white in that gorgeous hand-drawn style with red lipstick as the only point of color. It's already qualified to be on the shortlist for the Best Animated Short Oscar category, which isn't a guaranteed nomination but it's a step in the right direction.
On to the feature. Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the antagonist of an arcade game called Fix It, Felix, Jr.! Every time a quarter is put in, he runs out and starts wrecking the apartment building while Felix Jr. (Jack McBrayer) fixes it with his magic hammer. When the player wins, Ralph is thrown from the top of the building into the mud. But this callous treatment doesn't just end when the game is over. Reviled by the people of Niceland, Ralph lives in the dump while Felix gets the penthouse. At their 30th anniversary, Ralph tries to make nice but is told in no uncertain terms that he is unwanted. He decides to give up being the bad guy and see if he can win a medal as a hero in another game. He joins Hero's Duty as a space marine under the command of super-tough chick Calhoun (Jane Lynch) battling space bugs that morph into whatever they eat. He manages to score a medal but winds up with one of the newly hatched psy-bugs in his escape pod. He crashes into Sugar Rush, a game that's kind of like Candyland with Go-Karts. The bug disappears into the taffy swamp. But Ralph has a new problem: precocious Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), a glitch who desperately wants to be a racer. She steals Ralph's medal to buy her way into the line-up race. Initially furious, Ralph starts to feel bad when he realizes that Vanellope is treated pretty much the same way by the other racers as he was by the Nicelanders. They band together to try and win the race. Meanwhile, Felix Jr. is frantically trying to find Ralph before their game is declared unplayable. He runs into Calhoun who tells him that the psy-bug will multiply and destroy whatever game its in if it isn't stopped.
This was seriously one of the best movie experiences I've had in a long time. It was fun for pretty much any age, whether you play video games or not. There are a ton of appearances from famous arcade characters and games that even I recognized. The animation is beautiful, especially in Sugar Rush, and all of the voice actors are fantastic. This is almost a shoe-in to get a Best Animated feature nod and I would say that it's even better than Brave. It's one of the best films of the year that I've seen so far.
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