I actually loved the first Wreck-It Ralph as a homage to old-school arcade games and wanted to this sequel at the cinema due to its cool marketing and great word-of-mouth. I ended up not going because the movie release schedule was a bit packed then as I recall. After just now watching it at home however I kind of regret that as it’s even better than I’d hoped and it would have been nice to give its makers that extra bit of support at the box office.

Several years after the first film, Ralph is happy with his life and his friends. Vanellope however is getting bored with the usual routine. When Ralph tries to make a new track in her game, it leads to the player breaking off the steering wheel of the arcade machine. This means that the machine will be scrapped unless they can get a new steering wheel. As the arcade owner has recently connected the machines to the Internet, Ralph and Vanellope decide to enter the Internet, find Ebay and get the wheel there. This is naturally a great excuse for a grand adventure as they learn to navigate the Internet. Even after they find Ebay, they are surprised to learn that they actually need to pay real money after winning the auction. This leads to still more adventures as they try to come up with a way to make money on the Internet.

This summary only touches the bare bones of what happens here as the plot throws in unexpected swerves that I was surprised to see, a true rarity in a Disney animated film. The trailers already spoil Vanellope being accepted as one of the Disney princesses and I have to say that while this could easily have come across merely as a cheap tie-in, the writers and directors do a wonderful job of making the encounter funny, relevant to the story and topical in raising the issue of what being a Disney princess traditionally means. The film is rich and clever throughout, making jokes out of Internet and video game culture and memes, discusses female empowerment and role models, and throws shade at clingy male friends, with Vanellope even calling Ralph a white knight at one point. That’s an especially incisive critique here with the definition being a male friend who helps a female friend under the expectation that he will be repaid somehow for it. The design of the final enemy boss is just inspired, clearly taking cues from World War Z but also adapting it to represent an Internet mob.

The film is replete with cultural references of all kinds and it’s actually kind of scary as it rams home the fact that Disney now owns Star Wars, Marvel, the Muppets and Pixar, so that they have free rein to use those characters. I suppose that they must have made deals with companies like Pinterest and Ebay to directly involve them as well. They do use the properties very well and even their use of fictional video games that are parodies of real ones are very on point. It naturally invites comparison to Ready Player One which similarly traded on its references. Ready Player One however is a bad film because it used those references in a superficial manner, usually invoking no more than their visual images. This film succeeds because it also to some extent deconstructs the properties it references and in doing so demonstrates an understanding of what they are about. That’s the difference between an intelligent film and a dumb one.

All told this is far better film than I expected it to be and I think it’s no coincidence that the people behind it are also the ones who made the equally excellent Zootopia. I don’t even need to add the disclaimer here that this was mainly made to appeal to children as only adults will be old enough to appreciate its references and its treatment of friendship is mature enough to put most live-action films to shame.