I am a proud member the original Video Game generation.  I remember being mesmerized by the first arcade version of Pong back in 1972.  I remember the delightful discovery of being able to actually put “English” on the square they called the ball, using the rectangle which they called the paddle.

I was a Space Invaders and Ms. Pac Man addict.  If only I had half the quarters now that I spent back then, I could retire. I loved all the classics: Q-Bert, Racer X, Track and Field, Skyscraper, Burger Time, Joust, Pole Position, and all the original Donkey Kong/Mario Bros incarnations. 

So, when I first saw the trailer for Wreck-It Ralph, I was amused by his resemblance to a certain famous video ape and his counterpart’s resemblance to a certain small hammer-wielding Italian man.  And then I saw cameos by a number of old friends—er, characters from many of those earlier classic video games.

I was already hooked.

The best films begin with a simple what if.  In this case, what if the bad guy in a decades old arcade video game was tired of being the bad guy?  What if he left the game and tried to be the good guy in other games?

For decades Ralph has been wrecking the side of a building and it was up to Fix-It Felix to repair the damage and avoid getting hit by bricks that Ralph threw at him.  Yes, it’s very close to that wonderful ape game. And the early pixellation of the graphics is a dead-on match, too.

But after Ralph gets tired of being the bad guy and not being able to hang out with all the “good” characters in the game when no one is playing, he decides to see what other games have to offer in the way of being a hero.

His quick journey is fun and funny, and where Ralph ends up is in the most unlikely of video games.  I won’t ruin the joke by giving you its name here, but it is a racing game geared for children in a deceptively Candy Land-type universe

He makes a friend, makes an enemy and makes a number of mistakes which come back to haunt him in amusing and sometimes a little bit scary of ways.

Wreck-It Ralph is so fun, so sweet and so clever that I caught myself smiling—a lot.  I also laughed out loud a number of times and was just plain surprised at how much I liked this movie.

These days the visual “oh wow” factor of animated films just isn’t enough to be successful.  They’ve got to have stories that are interesting, fun and clever.  Did I say “fun” again?

The voice talent is really good.  John C. Reilly is both bad-guy fun and sweet. Had I not known the young, spunky female character was voiced by Sarah Silverman, I’d never have recognized her.  Jane Lynch is her always reliably humorous self as the commander of a modern-day army-killing-aliens soldier—with her own backstory programmed in.

The behind-the-screens universe created and the way the video characters move around from game to game and back are imaginative and enjoyable.  It would be easy to get bogged up in explaining it all, but the movie assumes you’ll get it and just moves the story along.

You don’t have to know a lot about the earliest video arcade games, but you'll get a few more of the inside jokes if you do.While there are a few elements that reminded me a little of Monsters, Inc., they quickly fade away into this wonderful little world of vagabond electrons.  Also, the ultimate bad guy might be a little scary for smaller kids, despite his voice being very close to a famous, likeable comic actor. (Hint: He was on the ceiling in Mary Poppins).

All in all, I was just delighted with Wreck-It Ralph, and I downloaded the Fix-It Felix game when I got home. And it’s just as fun as the old classics ... I'll have to go see it again to catch what I might have missed.

Anyone got a quarter?   Or maybe eleven bucks?

Ted Kopulos is a long-time Bay Area actor, writer and director who spent several years as movie critic for Greg Kihn's show on KFOX Radio.

Ted Kopulos