Wreck-It Ralph 2012

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: You'll either love it or you'll admire it, while wishing it would calm down and, I don't know, maybe pick up a book for a while. Read more

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: The most inventive and entertaining family movie I've seen this year, packed with wickedly smart humor and joyful animation. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: It's pure plastic product from plot line to the pro forma 3-D to the tidy moral lessons - ersatz family entertainment as disposable as it is diverting. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: 'Wreck-it Ralph' is a serious contender for the title of best animated film of the year. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The movie invites a measure of cynicism - which it proceeds to obliterate with a 93-minute blast of color, noise, ingenuity and fun. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: It's a lovely pretext for dazzling visuals, yet the production is diminished by the clumsiness of an 8-bit script. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The farcical story is cute, the dialogue witty and the players charming. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Bursting with candy-bright colors and zoomy action, Pixar's "Wreck-It Ralph" should prove as entertaining as a sugar rush for its young target audience. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: More than another standard cutesy reference-fest with some exciting chases and an eventual upbeat message. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The film flies off in all sorts of directions, all of them rewarding. But the best trick is how screenwriters Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee bring everything back together, even the seemingly least-related elements. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: It's fun for awhile, but it's not a video game you'll come back to once you set down the controller. Read more

Keith Staskiewicz, Entertainment Weekly: It doesn't quite carry the heft of Toy Story, but there's a lot of heart packed into these zeroes and ones. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: An adorable winner ... Read more

Justin Lowe, Hollywood Reporter: With a mix of retro eye-candy for grown-ups and a thrilling, approachable storyline for the tykes, the film casts a wide and beguiling net. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: The movie's subversive sensibility and old-school/new-school feel are a total kick. Read more

Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News: It's a fine piece of moviemaking that has a little something for kids who don't remember when games were played in arcades and adults who will delight in the tweaking of a bygone era. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: A gorgeously rendered story that will play just as well to children as to their parents, albeit for different reasons. Playstation and Xbox junkies will be equally pleased. Read more

Frank Lovece, Newsday: "Wreck-It Ralph" blends poignancy and a piston-powered plot that revels in both visual inventiveness and a vaudevillian sense of timing. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: For anyone with a grade-schooler and a free Saturday, it's a pretty safe and painless bet. And a great excuse to go up to the attic later and see if you can dig out your old Atari 2600. Read more

Scott Tobias, NPR: Wreck-It Ralph is pop nirvana, a headlong rush through classic arcade games and Nintendo standards that's not too busy playing spot-the-reference to keep from paying off in laughs and heart. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Amid all the boring crashing and chasing and slapstick, there are some brilliant flashes of wit (particularly a reference to the guards in the Wizard of Oz). Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Like a video game, Rich Moore's 3-D film is colorful, noisy, and pixel-deep. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Wreck-It Ralph never does anything groundbreaking with this idea, but it's cute and clever and evokes nostalgia for gamers of the '80s and '90s. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: 'Wreck-It Ralph' combines a fresh idea with a true love for retro pop culture. It's hard not to love this movie. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The art design and color palette of "Wreck-It Ralph" permit unlimited sets, costumes and rules, giving the movie tireless originality and different behavior in every different cyber word. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Wreck-It Ralph is the latest in a rash of recent movies fired up with imaginative risk. Director Moore brings a video junkie's passion to the movie game, and it's hilariously infectious. Read more

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: Delightfully off the rails, offering a grown-up-friendly tone and merging of visual styles that are reminiscent of the studio's 1988 animated homage to film noir, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Think "Tron" with belly laughs. Or "Night at the Museum" with any laughs. Read more

Jody Mitori, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Wreck-It Ralph" is a lot like video games and candy: light entertainment but fun while it lasts. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: Unlike the Pixar films toward which it aspires-which marry sophisticated conceits to straightforward storylines-Wreck-It Ralph consistently gets lost in its own intricate plot mechanics. Read more

Dave McGinn, Globe and Mail: It's impossible not to feel a strong sense of nostalgic amusement, if not sheer delight, at the comings and goings of all these characters. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: Starts out as a funny high scorer but limps into a second half as flat as those quarters we once pumped into arcade machines long ago. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: Life lessons about being true to yourself are learned along the way, delivered with all the subtlety of Felix's hammer, but Wreck-It Ralph actually makes us care about these videogame characters and their dreams. Read more

Guy Lodge, Time Out: Disney's found a lot to play with here, but you may find yourself itching to take the controls. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: The metaphor is clever, injecting real-life risk and reward into these beautifully artificial vistas, scored to composer Henry Jackman's Nintendo-worthy beeps and bloops. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: There are a staggering number of rules governing the gameplay in Wreck-It Ralph, and one of the toon's greatest pleasures comes in how intuitively audiences discover those parameters as the story unfolds. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: Wreck-It Ralph feels like so many modern AAA gaming titles-a promising starting point for an inevitable, improved sequel. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's a cool game, to be sure, but watching someone else play it gets old after a while. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Emphasizes action and eye-popping visuals over emotion. Read more