Directed by
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Written by
Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
The
success of toy-based movies to this point has been…well…about what you’d expect
out of toy-based movies, full of merchandising opportunities and not much
else. Meanwhile, Phil Lord and
Christopher Miller have been on a hot streak, after directing Cloudy with a
Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street, two movies that should’ve been awful
but were instead hilarious. And with The
Lego Movie, they’re proving that you can throw them any license and it’ll turn
out great.
Emmett
(Chris Pratt) is a normal construction worker who follows every rule, every
instruction, and is perfectly ordinary.
Then he stumbles upon the Piece of Resistance and gets picked up by
Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), who believes he’s the Special, the Master Builder
who can save the universe. And all the
Master Builders will have to team up if they’re going to stop President
Business (Will Ferrell) from destroying the world.
Let’s
start with the obvious necessity of a Lego movie: featuring Legos. Yes, yes, it’s an obvious point, but it’s the
sheer way this movie features Legos that’s incredible. The characters pass through several worlds
based on different sets, all of them distinctly different and interesting, but
when they come together true magic happens.
The Master Builder scene (that’s been featured in trailers) is a good
example, featuring everybody from NBA players to an 80s spaceman to
Milhouse. It could’ve just been done as
a way to show off all the different sets that Lego has, go ask your parents to
buy them right now, but they just flow into the movie, creating perfect jokes
and great interactions. And the other
plus of this Lego movie is the animation.
It’s computer-generated to look like stop-motion, and crazily enough, it
works. And there’s the fact that
everything is made out of Legos. The
Lego games tend to just have characters and important objects, while everything
else is realistic. Here? The lasers are Legos. The smoke clouds are Legos. Hell, when Wyldstyle goes into Master Builder
vision, the Lego pieces are marked with their actual piece numbers. It’s a crazy attention to detail that pays
off spectacularly.
And
all the detail would be nothing without a good story and plenty of good jokes,
and this movie has both. The story flows
perfectly, with plenty of expected twists for a story like this, and then
throwing in more than a few unexpected ones.
And the jokes are as rapid-fire as you’d expect, going from visual to
verbal to wherever the movie can take things.
And they’re both helped by an incredible voice cast. Everybody, from the main cast, to cameos such
as Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as Superman and Green Lantern, they’re all
doing a perfect job. Special notice must
be played to Will Ferrell, who once again proves that he should probably switch
over to voice acting, and Charlie Day as Spaceman Benny, who is quickly
becoming one of those people I look forward to hearing in animated movies.
The
Lego Movie is a pleasant surprise for toy movies, and another hit for Lord and
Miller. Witty and interesting, it’s an
early must-see for 2014.
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