Category: Movies

Wreck-It Ralph: Be Yourself and Don’t Listen To The Crowds

Disney, Movies

In Walt Disney Animation Studios' "Wreck-It Ralph," video game "bad guy" Ralph (voice of John C. Reilly) spends his lonely evenings gazing at the apartment building that it's his job to destroy...©2012 Disney. All Rights Reserved.On Sunday, we all went to the movie theater to see Wreck-It Ralph.  We’ve been anticipating this game for quite some time.  Going in, I was expecting a funny story and lots of references to old video games.  We got all of that, but what we didn’t expect was a valuable life lesson.

Note: While I’ll try to keep the following as spoiler-free as possible, I might slip and reveal a little too much here and there.  So, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, proceed with caution.

In Wreck-It Ralph, the title character is the bad guy in a video game called Fix It Felix, Jr.  Ralph destroys the building in Niceland.  Felix (controlled by the player) fixes it up with his golden hammer.  When the player fixes the whole building, Ralph is tossed off the top of the building by the citizens of Niceland and lands in the mud below.  When the game shuts down for the night, the Niceland citizens party with Felix.  Ralph, meanwhile, is regulated to spending his time alone in the dump, lying atop a pile of bricks.

Sick of being the bad guy stuck on the sidelines, Ralph attempts to join a party celebrating his game’s 30th anniversary.  Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan and the citizens of Niceland tell him, in no uncertain terms, that his place is in the dump and not with them.

Meanwhile, in another game, Venellope Von Schweetz is a glitch of a character.  The other racers pick on her, shun her, and actively try to keep her from racing.  They want nothing to do with her and would love if she would just disappear from the game entirely.

Both of these characters could listen to the crowds.  They could listen to the people who tell them that they are worthless and won’t ever do anything good or important in their lives.  Thankfully, they don’t.  (Or it would be a very short movie.)  They do their best to prove the crowds wrong.  And, in the end, they must show how the very things that people decried as horrible about them are actually useful strengths.

Wreck-It Ralph is a great movie to watch for pure entertainment.  However, it also has a very powerful message, especially to those of us who have dealt with bullies in the past.  Let’s take a lesson from Ralph and Venellope and show those who oppose us just how being ourselves makes us stronger and not freaks or "glitches."

Geeky Upgrade

Geeky Pursuits, Movies, Television

IMG_20120803_073708_watermarkedThis past week has been quite the geeky upgrade.  It all started on Friday.  Ok, technically that’s not “this week”, but it is within the past 7 days.  As part of my birthday present, I received three Lego minifigures that I’m going to use to create some Lego tie clips.

On Saturday, the boys and I watched some Bean episodes.  I had previously shown the boys Mr. Bean’s Vacation and they had fallen in love with Rowan Atkinson’s antics.  I figured that they’d like the Bean shorts more and I was right.  They laughed non-stop at Bean in a hospital (hand stuck in a teapot), Bean visiting a school (losing his pants in a changing room and tracking them down), and more.  Every place Bean went, chaos seemed to follow and Bean would either be the cause or would come up with an extremely creative (and unusual)

Sunday was the day that I took apart my laptop to fix a problem deep inside.  Though I believe I fixed that problem, it turned out that the power cord was faulty too.  A replacement has been ordered and is on its way.  Still, the lessons learned from that operation were well worth the effort.

Sunday night, I introduced NHL to Back To The Future.  He’s been hooked since that night.  We watched BTTF parts 2 and 3 and he is in love with the entire trilogy.  I was so proud of NHL when, after Marty was apparently shot and killed, he guessed that Marty had copied a scene from A Fistful of Dollars starring Clint Eastwood (a scene shown in the previous movie) and had a metal plate under his shirt.  He could barely contain himself as the third movie reached its climax.  Check that, he didn’t contain himself.  He was up off the couch, jumping up and down, and cheering Doc Brown and Marty McFly on.

Finally, I had a small geeky upgrade of my own.  For years, I’ve heard people say how great the Doctor Who series is.  I meant to watch it, but never seemed to get a chance.  With six seasons available on Netflix, though, I decided it was time to watch.  I’m only three episodes in, but I love it already.  The weirdness, time travel, and plot lines have me wanting more.  Given that I still have 80 episodes to watch before I catch up, I should be good for some time.

Have you or your kids tried any new geeky pursuits?

Passing The Geekiness On To The Future

Geeky Pursuits, Movies, NHL

There are quite a few pieces of geeky culture that I have shared with NHL.  I’ve introduced him to superheroes, to video games, Star Wars, and even to the Internet.  However, there are still many more things to show him.  Some will need to wait until he is older, but this weekend I showed him yet another element: Back To The Future.

Back To The Future is, of course, the classic time travel tale featuring Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd.  NHL was pretty excited when we took it out of the library.  When the movie began, however, he changed his mind.  It was just going too slow for his taste and he wanted to turn something else on.  I kept reassuring him that this was all setup and that things would pick up once they went back in time.

Then, Marty got himself stuck in 1955.  From that point on, NHL was hooked.  He was on the edge of his seat as Marty’s siblings started to disappear.  He cheered when Marty triumphed over Biff.  He kept hoping against hope that Doc and Marty could pull off their plan and get Marty home.

Then, Doc showed up at the end and whisked Marty and Jennifer off to the future.  Though we didn’t have time, he kept trying to guess what happened next.  He is definitely a Back To The Future fan and can’t wait until we have time to watch parts 2 and 3.

What geeky movies have you and your kids watched recently?

Age Appropriate Geekiness

Books, Geeky Pursuits, Movies, NHL, Video Games

NHL is a budding geek.  I’m sure of it.  He loves superheroes and playing video games.  He also likes reading.  Although sometimes the prospect of starting a new book seems to overwhelm him, once he’s into a book, he will pour through it until he’s finished with it.

I decided that he was old enough to be introduced to some of the science fiction that I loved growing up.  So I found my old copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot.  I figured this would be good since it is just a collection of short stories.  We could read them together and go story by story.  NHL liked it, but didn’t want to continue after the second story.  I think they were too slow and cerebral for his taste.  So I’m on the search for other science fiction and/or fantasy books that would be more his speed.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been thinking about some of the classic movies that I grew up on that he would enjoy.  Back To The Future is definitely on the list.  I think he’d get a kick out of Marty McFly’s adventures through time.  I told him about the trilogy and semi-spoiled it by saying they go to the Old West in the third movie.  He suddenly got very interested.  (He did ask if they went back to the time of the Dinosaurs.  He seemed disappointed that Back To The Jurassic wasn’t one of the movies.)

Beetlejuice was on TV the other night and I loved seeing the Maitland’s try to cope with being dead, the new family in their house and "the ghost with the most" living in their model’s graveyard.  Part of me thought that NHL would like this movie, but then I saw the "gory/scary" parts.  They aren’t really bad.  Nothing approaching "horror movie" level, but just gory enough to scare NHL.  (He has this thing about blood.)  Perhaps in a few years, he’ll be able to handle it, but not now.

Of course, given his love of video games, I’m definitely going to take NHL to see the video game movie: Wreck-It Ralph.  He might not get all of the cameos (like Q-Bert), but this movie definitely looks like it has the right level of geekiness and age appropriateness.

What age appropriate geeky books/movies would you introduce to your child?

Age Appropriate Geekiness

Books, Geeky Pursuits, Movies, NHL, Video Games

NHL is a budding geek.  I’m sure of it.  He loves superheroes and playing video games.  He also likes reading.  Although sometimes the prospect of starting a new book seems to overwhelm him, once he’s into a book, he will pour through it until he’s finished with it.

I decided that he was old enough to be introduced to some of the science fiction that I loved growing up.  So I found my old copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot.  I figured this would be good since it is just a collection of short stories.  We could read them together and go story by story.  NHL liked it, but didn’t want to continue after the second story.  I think they were too slow and cerebral for his taste.  So I’m on the search for other science fiction and/or fantasy books that would be more his speed.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been thinking about some of the classic movies that I grew up on that he would enjoy.  Back To The Future is definitely on the list.  I think he’d get a kick out of Marty McFly’s adventures through time.  I told him about the trilogy and semi-spoiled it by saying they go to the Old West in the third movie.  He suddenly got very interested.  (He did ask if they went back to the time of the Dinosaurs.  He seemed disappointed that Back To The Jurassic wasn’t one of the movies.)

Beetlejuice was on TV the other night and I loved seeing the Maitland’s try to cope with being dead, the new family in their house and "the ghost with the most" living in their model’s graveyard.  Part of me thought that NHL would like this movie, but then I saw the "gory/scary" parts.  They aren’t really bad.  Nothing approaching "horror movie" level, but just gory enough to scare NHL.  (He has this thing about blood.)  Perhaps in a few years, he’ll be able to handle it, but not now.

Of course, given his love of video games, I’m definitely going to take NHL to see the video game movie: Wreck-It Ralph.  He might not get all of the cameos (like Q-Bert), but this movie definitely looks like it has the right level of geekiness and age appropriateness.

 

What age appropriate geeky books/movies would you introduce to your child?

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