Movie Review: The Lego Movie

Directed by: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014

IMDB listing

Pros: fun story, humour works for adults and kids

Cons: occasional jerky animation, not enough knights and castles!

Emmet Brickowski is revealed to be the lego minifigure of prophecy when he finds the Piece of Resistance, the only thing that can stop Lord Business from unleashing a superweapon on the world.

This movie is so much fun.  The characters are great, with quirky personalities (especially the 80s something astronaut), with the exception of Emmet who’s so ordinary he acts as a straight man for the others’ humour.  

The film manages to use a lot of proprietary characters like Batman and other DC heroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars characters etc.  While only Batman has a major part, it’s crazy seeing so many different universes intersect.

I found the animation style took a little getting used to.  It’s filmed as though it’s done with stop motion animation, so things are a bit jerky at times.  

My only other ‘complaint’ is that they spent a decent amount of time in the western world, but only passed by the medieval one (which is my favourite).

There’s an odd commentary in the film about whether adults should collect LEGO sets, making them to their exact designs and displaying them or if LEGO is best enjoyed as a kid’s toy, mixing up all the pieces and coming up with new, sometimes crazy, things.  As someone who loved LEGO as a kid (back before they had kits) and who now has a LEGO Hogwarts on display (as well as numerous sets done by my husband) I’m a bit of a fence sitter.  Given LEGO’s push for kits in the last decade or so, it seems odd that they’re now saying to let your kids tear those labourously built brick sculptures apart (and make no mistake, it is VERY time consuming putting these things together).

I did leave the film wanting to actually play with the Hogwarts set, rather than have it on display - or pull out some old LEGO blocks and build something new.  The movie was a lot of fun and if you like LEGO and using your imagination, go check it out.

[Normally I would embed the trailer here, but I saw this film without having seen the trailer and it was... liberating seeing a film with no expectations and no idea what the plot was.  So I'm linking to the trailer instead.]