Ralph Breaks the Internet

I was quite enthusiastic about Wreck-It Ralph, and this sequel is even better. Sarah Silverman is back as Vanellope, and Jane Lynch as the super-soldier. Vanellope is glitching, turning into static now and then, and still obsessed with winning the races in her game, Sugar Rush. It is all wonderful, but two things stand out over all the ingenious stuff. One is the Internet itself. Seen from the inside, the Net is a super-detailed, super-fast, super-huge metropolis, dominated by buildings labeled Google and Amazon, and so forth. In an age of stunning CGI animation, this is the stunningest I’ve ever seen. There are so many riches that you would have to take it almost frame-by-frame to see a tenth of them all, but that’s okay, since what you do have the time to glimpse is so damn great.

But best of all, and so devilishly funny, is that they visit a site called Oh My Disney, where all the Disney Princesses reside. If you don’t know what that is, it is the biggest marketing bonanza since Star Wars, a multi-billion-dollar enterprise peddling princess outfits to pre-teen girls, who have tons of money to spend these days. They are hilarious! There are twelve official princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, and Moana, plus Anna and Elsa from Frozen, who I suspect will soon be joining the line-up, probably about when Frozen 2 debuts. They are all voiced by the original actresses, except for three who are dead or too old. And once out of character in their backstage area, they are just ordinary girls. Snow White bitches that she’s tired of wearing the same damn costume for the last eighty friggin’ years!

This lost the Best Animated Feature Oscar to something called Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. That movie got very, very good reviews, but it would have to be something super-extraordinary to be better than this, and I really, really doubt that. But I may never know for sure. My interest in all things Marvel is damn near zero, and Lee’s is less than zero. Maybe I’m missing something great. Well, I can live with that.