2014, dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth
Banks: IMDb /
allmovie
In a world where… one man must… and it's all made of Lego.
This is a self-uncriticising film. Is it a generic hero's journey
that we've seen many times before? Is the protagonist an uninspiring
schlub? Sure! It's all meant to be that way!
Bits of it are excellent, particularly the initial sequence in the
main narrative, getting up and going to work while not noticing the
sinister overtones, culminating in the excellent song "Everything is
Awesome". The action is sometimes a bit confused, and the huge number
of Lego licences that have to be name-checked means that there are
plenty of cameos and quick references taking up space and time that
could have been given to the primary characters.
When one looks for the actual messages in the script, beyond
"Everything is Awesome", they're worryingly inclined to subvert the
subversion of the first few minutes: the way to win is not to invent
your own stuff, it's to work with everybody else and follow the
instructions. No matter how smart and skilled and brave you are, you
can be upstaged by the bland guy who happened to be in the wrong place
at the wrong time and picked up the Destiny Token. And, for those of
us who grew up with classic Lego, there's a distressing emphasis on
having just the right special-purpose part rather than on putting
things together out of the basic blocks. (All right, making the space
Lego guy the comic relief doesn't help here either.)
And then, for the last half-hour or so, there's a change out to a
sappy cliché that isn't part of the Lego-world story. It's weak and
well-trodden material, and going outside the world just reinforces the
idea that none of the primary narrative really matters; everything
Lego exists at someone else's whim. Somehow Toy Story managed to
avoid this trap. But hey, let's party!
Still, the action sequences are good, and Wyldstyle (whom the film
should really have been about; instead she's just another Trinity, who
did all the hard work but got ignored by the author) is always fine;
the sight gags will appeal to people who like sight gags, and won't
spoil it for everyone else; and if you don't think too hard about it,
it's an enjoyable experience. (I never really like films that I can't
enjoy if I think about them too much. But this is a minority opinion.)
You can buy
Lego Movie Lego sets
with all the special custom pieces you'll need to recreate scenes from
the film. Of course you can. Everything is Awesome.
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