Big Screen Review: Wreck-it Ralph

I'm not going to lie, my wife and I were looking forward to seeing this movie with our 3-year old. Since I was having trouble finding time to watch a newly relevant old movie(e.g. re-release of Blade Runner on Blu-ray), I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for the first post.

The original music in this movie was written by Henry Jackman a man whose work I am not familiar with at all. As I look through his credits I can see why, he is new(ish) to the scene, and the movies that he has written for (Kick-Ass, Gulliver Travels, X-Men: First Class) I have not seen. He has made the jump to movie scoring with an assist from Hans Zimmer, after leading with his synthesizer work on some of the more popular movies and scores of the last decade.

As an old-school gamer I was looking forward to this movie for the visual, and hopefully musical references. I did my best to stay focused on the music, however the movie did a nice job of drawing me in. To that end I never really noticed the music, which could have been the goal. There were many moments when I thought that there should have been music where there wasn't, such as any time there was sadness on the part of the main character. (As I think about it this is not unusual in childrens' movies, think Toy Story). Toy Story did use minimal scoring during those moments, but Ralph seemed to use none. This is very indicative of another composer which worked on The Dark Knight with Zimmer, James Newton Howard. Howard does a nice job of knowing when to not write something. I think that Jackman was playing on this as well.

The music that was prominent was very well done and quite appropriate. The real-life game Halo was the obvious inspiration for the in-movie game Hero's Duty and the music plays that part very well. However, the "kiddie go-kart game" Sugar Rush (inspired by Mario Kart?) did not have any memorable melodies for the emotional moments or the exciting moments. Any music that was there did not have any musical ties to one another.

Overall, the score was too sparse but well written. Nothing exceptional, nothing to take you out of the experience of the movie. There was nothing musical to keep you in the movie either.

Quality of Music 1.5/2.5

Appropriateness of Music 2.0/2.5

Musical Moments 1.5/2.5

Purchasing Power 1.0/2.5

Total 6.0/10