Wreck It Ralph (2012)

This concludes my viewing of the 2012 Academy Award nominations for Best Feature Length Animation Film (I must say, it was a lot easier to go through the shorts, and they were thoroughly enjoyable to do, so if you missed doing that, I highly recommned it).

Here are my preferences, in order:

1. Pirates!  Band of Misfits
2. Frakenweenie (this is really a tie with my third choice, and rose to second only because of my long time admiration for tim Burton and his particulatly romantic brand of the macabre)
3. Wreck It Ralph
4. Brave
5. ParaNorman

So, you can see that I am completely out of step with people who decide these awards.

Wreck It Ralph is a classic story of a guy who is the bad guy, and is more or less completely satisfied with his bad guy role until one day he just isn't.  He wants to be admired for the qualities that he has that are good.  Or at least be admitted to the party.  The story is told within the framework of arcade video games, where the lines between good and bad are pretty sharply drawn.

Since he cannot be a good guy in his game, he travels to another game, successfully accomplishes what needs to be done, and gets a medal for his work.  But it isn't that easy--of course not!  The rest of the story is about good overcoming evil, a small love story, a good friendship thrown in, as well as the value of being different from the rest.  Classic animated story material, but very enjoyably done.