For the week of February 25th, Walt Disney Home Entertainment is bringing the animated sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet to Blu-ray. The best thing about the Wreck-It Ralph movies is how they use their titular star to Trojan-Horse in the real hero. As voiced by the great John C. Reilly, Ralph is a wonderful creation: a shambling, dopey, amiable video-game villain who clocks into his Big Bad status the same way those cartoon wolf and sheep did in that one Looney Tunes cartoon. But he's also, by design, a fairly static character. Ralph knows who he is, loves his routines, and sees no reason to deviate much from either. Enter Sarah Silverman's brilliant, ambitious Vanellope von Schweetz. Vanellope is a video-game racer who's always looking to transcend her status, and it's that instinct that gives these movies their narrative drive. Ralph Breaks the Internet takes Vanellope to some existential places the film's target audience probably isn't prepared to go. When we open the film, Vanellope has won. She's the Queen (or, rather, Princess) of her Sugar Rush racing game, she's slid into an idyllic friendship with Ralph, and she couldn't be more bored. She's no longer content with being the best - she needs to find the Next Best Thing. It struck me, what a valuable message for kids, and what a challenging one. These children's entertainments default to simple truths (tell the truth. Defend what's right. Follow your dream) that we're not ready when they drop something thornier. Sometimes, we can get what we want and still want more; sometimes, the best of friends and family aren't enough to fulfill a driven individual. The miracle of Ralph Breaks the Internet is how seamlessly it integrates these messy concepts into gleaming studio formula. The density of images and jokes in this one is staggering - directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston have made the Who Framed Roger Rabbit of the Internet, with hundreds of blink-and-you'll-miss-'em digital references (to Grand Theft Auto and Amazon and eBay and Google and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram and YouTube and so many more) nestled alongside far more sly satirical points. To paraphrase Ben Hosley, this is the wholly successful version of Ready Player One. An uncredited Bill Hader plays pop-up scumbum J.P. Spamley like a sleazy Boston gangster, forever hawking terrible, virus-prone get-rich-quick schemes, and just as arch is Taraji P. Henson's popularity algorithm Yesss, who comes across like the most obnoxious form of a social-media influencer (whatever that is). You've probably seen the bit from the trailer where Vanellope meets her Disney Princess predecessors, but the movie has more surprises in that vein, from how Vanellope's fashion sense influences the group to the Alan Menken-penned song that lets Vanellope express her inner wants in the weirdest fashion possible. But all of this exists to bolster Vanellope and her journey to find the Next Thing. There's no real bad guy in Ralph Breaks the Internet, just as series of hard emotional truths. Both Vanellope and Ralph are struggling with ambition, with insecurity, with doubt, and defeating those proves more important than stopping any power-mad digital sprite. Life's too complicated to end in a boss fight. It ends with people like Vanellope quietly realizing they need more, and then setting off against all odds to get it. This is a terrific film.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that "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."
I like what Disney is doing with Wreck-It Ralph so much that I can almost excuse the Mouse House's 4K failings: if Disney has so little interest in promoting its Ultra HD physical discs, then let me shout about the 4K pressings of both The Little Mermaid and Captain America: The First Avenger. Even though the film is a perennial childhood favorite, contemporary viewers might be hard-pressed to explain why The Little Mermaid is such an important title in the Disney canon. The story of a young mermaid who dreams of life on land, this 1989 animated title has all the elements that viewers now expect from Disney: a spunky hero, an odious villain, reams of colorful supporting characters, and a song roster (by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, both of whom returned for Beauty and the Beast) that approximates the Broadway entertainment model for the big-screen. The key distinction between The Little Mermaid and the other Disney features that followed in its wake is that this one set the template, and not a moment too soon. Due to a series of staff turnovers in both the management and animation departments, the Mouse House had been floundering creatively for over a decade, with only a few errant bright spots (The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Great Mouse Detective) emerging as critical and commercial successes. The Little Mermaid reversed the tide; Disney devoted four years and countless millions to getting it right, including developing new special effects techniques for the many underwater sequences and building a satellite animation studio in Florida that could contribute extra production resources. The result? Disney regained its cinematic footing, and the film itself became one of the most beloved animated pictures ever made. The First Avenger will never share the same reputation, although it's just as important as Iron Man in terms of how it establishes the MCU. If Iron Man got viewers to buy into the characters (recall that Tony Stark was a minor fan favorite before 2008), The First Avenger established the stakes of the larger shared universe, and with far more cohesion than the deleted-scenes reel that is Iron Man 2. We jump back to WWII and the early days of what would become S.H.I.E.L.D., even including appearances from Stark's dad Howard (a charming Dominic Cooper); we puzzle over the mystical whatzit that Nazi tyrant Red Skull (a delightful Hugo Weaving) hopes will bring him unlimited power, a whatzit that now occupies space in Thanos' gauntlet. And as directed by The Rocketeer's Joe Johnston, we get all sorts of stirring battle scenes, albeit ones soaking in a bit too much CGI. Best of all, we meet Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, who remains the emotional lynchpin of the whole MCU. Stark is funnier and T'Challa is cooler and the Guardians of the Galaxy are more dysfunctional, but Rogers provides such a steady hand. There's a sadness to what Evans brings - he's a man forever out of time, and that includes right after he becomes a super-soldier - and he somehow gives these comic-book thrills something resembling humanity. Realistically, if you're a fan, you probably have these titles already, and it's really up to you to decide if it's worth upgrading to 4K. But if you're looking to stave off the death of physical media, then sound the alarm about such releases. Disney sure won't.
Of The Little Mermaid's 4K release, Martin Liebman noted that "generally…the increase in depth and intensity to everything from the film's title to bold yellow/orange sunsets near film's end are enormous. As noted, there's little obvious improvement to textures, which is not necessarily an issue. Lines are crisp, definition is solid, and clarity is a highlight throughout the film; all of these are improvements over the Blu-ray. Lines enjoy more distinguishing definition and separation...The UHD manages to bring out clearer, more perfectly defined textural nuances that in 2160p appear with greater distinction rather than take on a fairly crude shape as seen in 1080p. But these are generally minor upticks that, as important as they may be, cannot hold a candle to the impact HDR brings to the table. The image maintains a pleasing and complimentary grain structure for the duration, showing that there has seen little, if any, tampering from the original film transfer elements. The source appears pristine with no artifacts of note. The UHD shows no compression artifacts, either. Ultimately, beyond a few tightening textures, this one is all about the HDR and the end result is a breathtaking revival of a cherished Disney classic that compliments, not reinvents, the colorful source."
From Shout Factory comes a beloved cult favorite: Robert Zemeckis' raucous comedy Used Cars. It's inconceivable now that folks wouldn't consider a Zemeckis picture a major event, but such is Used Cars' odd misfortune. In 1980, Zemeckis had made a name for himself as Steven Spielberg's less successful friend. Spielberg was one of the few who enjoyed Zemeckis' 1978 flop I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and so Spielberg contracted Zemeckis as a writer on his next feature and agreed to produce Used Cars. Here's the thing: that Spielberg movie Zemeckis wrote was 1941, and Used Cars pretty much disappeared after a short theatrical run. Yet in its own profane way, Used Cars remains one of its director's finest features. If you're just looking for a raunchy comedy, the film works like gangbusters. It takes Animal House's "slobs vs. snobs" mentality and applies it to the sales war between two used-car dealers: Jack Warden's slimy rich jerk Roy Fuchs and Jack Warden's amiable loser Luke Fuchs. You read that right - Warden plays both brothers, but when Luke has a heart attack and dies, his scheming number-two Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell, giving one of his best performances) pulls out every con and grift he can imagine to outsell Roy. Nudity and bad behavior abound, albeit directed and scripted with more wit than you might expect. Zemeckis is working with his longtime screenwriter partner Bob Gale, and like their masterful Back to the Future script, every gag in Used Cars pays off some other plot detail, and every major setpiece (including a final auto-wrangling chase that owes its existence to Stagecoach's great final action sequence) advances and deepens the thematic tension. But Zemeckis and Gale are interested in more than well-made schlock. To hear them discuss it (on the film's wonderful commentary track, which also features a cackling and delightful Russell), Used Cars is their big Frank Capra piss-take designed to satirize '80s consumerism. Rudy Russo acts like a sociopathic Jimmy Stewart from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; he wants nothing more than to use his financial success as a springboard for political office, where he dreams of selling out almost immediately. And the film never makes Russo grow or change out of his corrupt inclinations. He's just as idealistically sleazy at the end as at the beginning. I'm starting to see maybe why the film flopped, but the one benefit of its failure? If Used Cars is new to you, then you're in for a treat.