Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Ralph Breaks the Internet Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman February 17, 2019

It wasn't long ago that Sony Pictures Animation released The Emoji Movie, a digitally animated, kid-friendly film that attempted to bring the Internet to life. The film was more than awful by any standard, but its core idea of giving shape and place and life and feel to the digital realm within the modern online world was certainly one well worth exploring. Ralph Breaks the Internet, sequel to 2012's mega-popular Wreck-It Ralph, offers a proper animated foray into the Internet, dropping its title hero Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and his best friend, Sugar Rush kart racer Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman), into the digital realm where they discover its positives, its negatives, its opportunities, its dangers, its places, and its inhabitants, an overwhelming assortment of (the Internet of) things that ultimately threatens to tear their friendship apart. It's uproariously funny, particularly in its second act, and compared to Emoji written and made with a greater understanding of not the Internet but rather how to build and depict it around two characters whose friendship takes center stage, not the assortment of online highlights that accompany them on their adventure.

When Vanellope wants a new track in her racing game, something to shake up the monotony of the same-old, same-old, Ralph enters the game and makes one, which causes her to veer off the predetermined path and her human player to break the arcade machine’s steering wheel trying to regain control. It turns out that a replacement wheel is for sale online but at a price that is too cost prohibitive for the arcade’s proprietor, Mr. Litwak (Ed O'Neill), to bother with. The game is unplugged, its characters barely escape, and the machine is destined for the dump. Good-eared Ralph remembers hearing that some entity known as “eboy” has the part needed to fix the machine, so he and Vanellope take a trip to the arcade’s recently installed WiFi router to hop onto the Internet, get the part from (was it actually “eBay”?) and return things in the arcade to the way they were. In the Internet, they find themselves in awe of the spectacle and size and endless possibilities. They find eBay without much trouble, locate the wheel, and win the bidding for the excessively and needlessly hefty cost of $27,001, which they obviously cannot pay. Out off desperation, they “click” on a shady get-rich-quick scheme in order to raise the funds in the 24 hour window eBay provides to get the wheel and save the game. But a few dollars here and there will not help their cause. They eventually realize that they’re going to have to turn to the world of online video production -- i.e. make fools of themselves to the delight of millions -- if they are going to raise that much money in such a short period of time.

The film has a lot of fun stylizing various components of the Internet, creating a tangible, inhabitable, traversable digital world where one really doesn’t exist (right?). The film’s middle stretch, and most of its end, spring to life with various realizations of a real world made from nothing but real graphics and no shortage of imagination. This is unquestionably the film’s crux, its ability to so enticingly build its own vision of the Internet, but what sets it apart from Emoji is that it takes the time to purposefully insert the characters into that world and make sure that every little component is tailored to their adventure. Beyond, mostly, a few sweeping set pieces that offer a multitude of Internet trivialities seen at distance amongst a clutter of online wonders, the film carefully constructs its world with characters and story in mind, not jamming in an excess of fan service fluff. The filmmakers rarely take the proverbial “kitchen sink” or’ “see what sticks” approach, instead ensuring that most everything of prominence serves a purpose along the way.

Of course, Ralph’s and Vanellope’s adventures through the Internet are not all fun and games. The film does not shy away from the Net’s darker side, not just the “dark web” as it is but the more intimate downside, particularly “comment sections” that here deflate Ralph down from a high point when he stumbles into an empty room where a few positive posts are drowned out by hate, by people berating him for what they believe to be poor content, his size, or his looks. The scene almost feels more like an aside than it does a critical cog in the movie’s greater infrastructure, but kudos to the filmmakers for including the realities of rude Internet postings that serve no constructive purpose other than to hurt victims and inflate some nonexistent digital ego for those who partake in online hate.

Ralph Breaks the Internet Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ralph Breaks the Internet downloads onto Blu-ray with a very good 1080p transfer. The digitally created material is appropriately crisp and clean with sharp, effortless renders that maintains a level of intimate visual excellence even through the Internet's most sprawling locales, filled with abundantly diverse websites and the character models that bustle about them. The image is abundantly colorful but, particularly early on, feels a bit light and lacking the depth and saturation one might expect. A rooftop scene featuring Ralph and Vanellope after her game is unplugged occurs around the 12-minute mark. Raised blacks and lightly saturated clothes define the scene. Color depth and contrast appear to gain some much-needed solidification when the characters leave the comparatively drab arcade world and enter the abundantly colorful Internet, where even Ralph's orange shirt, for example, enjoys seemingly far greater color intensity. The Blu-ray is free of any obvious blemishes, like aliasing or banding, and even the somewhat drab colors in the opening act might be a result of filmmaker intent.

Ralph Breaks the Internet Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ralph Breaks the Internet surfs onto Blu-ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack (the UHD offers a Dolby Atmos audio presentation). This track yields the same characteristics as most recent Disney audio presentations, playing low at calibrated reference volume and requiring an upward volume adjustment to more fully enjoy. Once there, the track is fine, if not a bit flat in places. The track seems to pick and choose its dynamics, offering some solid, room-rattling bass in some scenes while playing rather timidly in others where more punch and depth would seem to be a natural fit. The track does offer some impressive, sometimes dramatic surround details, whether discrete effects or more fluid and fully engaging stage-filling sonic madness, such as when Vanellope first enters a Disney fan site. Additionally, dialogue reverb opens up when the situation allows, notably when Vanellope and Ralph first attempt to access the Internet in chapter four inside the router at the arcade. Music is appropriately wide and filling with some back channel fill and dialogue is natural and well detailed.

Ralph Breaks the Internet Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Ralph Breaks the Internet features a fairly modest supplemental selection. A DVD copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover.

• Surfing for Easter Eggs (1080p, 3:36): Revealing a few of the hidden surprises within the movie.
• The Music of Ralph Breaks the Internet (1080p, 10:18): A look at the different types of music in the film and the music's structural and narrative purposes.
• BuzzzTube Cats (1080p, 1:47): A collection of cat videos created to support the making of the film.
• How We Broke the Internet (1080p, 32:57 total runtime): Following an Introduction, the piece includes the following subsections that explore the making of various scenes in the film: Netizens, Net Users; Knowsmore; eBay; Older Net; Slaughter Race; BuzzzTube; Ohmydisney; Ralphzilla; and The Goodbye.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Included are Into the Internet (4:54), Opposites (3:17), Domestic Hell (2:43), Bubble of One (5:56), and Recruiting Grandma (2:15). Directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston chip in to discuss the scenes in early conceptual stages of completion (Grandma is in a more close-to-complete state).
• Music Videos (1080p): Included are "Zero" - Performed by Imagine Dragons (3:51) and "In This Place" - Performed by Julia Michaels (3:22).

Ralph Breaks the Internet Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The film's climax is probably its least impressive sequence, when a crisis is averted by the typical play-it-safe talk-down with soft music and emotional pleas rather than something a little more daring or creative. Even as the film, as noted earlier, works hard to intertwine its world and its characters and its story, the former is certainly the driving force and the film finds its best moments in its second act, one of discovery, as the heroes traverse the digital world, new and exciting to them, familiar but cooly embodied (and packed with little winks and nods and Easter eggs) for the audience. The picture is creative and very entertaining and its character beats and the evolution of the Ralph-Vanellope relationship is a highlight, but the film is ultimately just a well-made frivolity that does its thing very well. Disney's Blu-ray delivers solid video, audio that could have been a little better in the aggregate, and a few extras. Recommended.