Does Disney’s latest animated foray Wreck-It Ralph live up to the peppy pixelated promise of its retro fun trailer? Not quite. Is it an enjoyable pre-holiday diversion with a lot of heart to accompany its endlessly merchandisable premise? Absolutely.

A shameless amalgam of Disney’s own Toy Story, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Tron, this film deftly imagines a world in which video game characters (from across thirty years of canon beloved by Gens X & Y, Millennials, and beyond) live, laugh, argue, and play after the neighborhood video arcade takes its last round of quarters for the evening. Clever touches and pop cultural references abound, with the Donkey Kong-esque titular character Ralph, warmly voiced by the ever-reliable John C. Reilly, trying to shake off three decades of villainy to gain acceptance from his digital cohorts.

The film has a bit of a rambling quality that occasionally makes it seem longer than its brief 90-minute running time. However, all threads add up to a meaningful and (nearly) moving denouement. As Ralph ventures across a number of video game settings in search of exoneration, he meets a cast of fully-realized, quirkily lovable characters voiced beautifully by the likes of Jane Lynch, Sarah Silverman, Alan Tudyk (sounding eerily like Alan Sues, who portrayed a very similar character in 1977’s Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure), Jack McBrayer, and Edie McClurg.

The movie is fun but not overly funny, warm but not always engaging, clever but not always smart. If, like me, you still have your Atari 2600 in the basement…if, on a rainy day, you plug it in for a heated round of Frogger…if you have ever wondered what those miraculous constructs of “1”s and “0”s are up to when said console is on its shelf, then, you will bask in the arcade-lit glow of Wreck-It Ralph. However, you will probably also reflect back on how much more robust were your own childhood imaginings of characters like Q*Bert or Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde.

P.S. Making Wreck-It Ralph a must-see is the animated short that precedes it: Paperman. A gorgeously black-and-white, seamless blend of traditional and computer animation, the piece tells the tale of a young man smitten with a young woman he briefly meets at a train station and how he reconnects with her through the persistent, magical aid of a fleet of pesky paper airplanes. Sounds silly? You bet. Will the music and the lovingly drawn characters bring a tear to your eye? Count on it.