"The Lego Movie" should be a soulless cash-grab designed to sell toys, video games, and "Happy Meal" toys. The mixing and matching of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and even the Star Wars franchise sounds like it would be a blind tossing of ideas, hoping one of them will stick and result in a child crying for the merchandise. Even the title of "The Lego Movie" sounds like they took no creativity in assembling it. All of these assumptions are incorrect. Instead, "The Lego Movie" is a charming, gorgeous, creative, adorable, and hilarious movie. It surprises around every turn and is a total pleasure. It is the kind of family movie we all hope for when we plunk down far too much money for 3D glasses and snacks. It is the type of family movie where everyone will walk away with their face hurting from laughing, the songs stuck in their head, and maybe even a little sniffling.
Emmet Brickowoski (voiced by Chris Prine) lives a comfortable life. He wakes up and follows the same daily instructions as everyone else in his town. Get up. Greet the world. Sing "Everything is Awesome" (which appears to be the only song there is). Watch "Where's My Pants" (which appears to be the only show there is). Go to work. Repeat. One day though, Emmet comes into contact with a block piece known as The Piece of Resistance. A prophecy states that whoever comes into contact with this piece will be a special Masterbuilder, a person who can restore order to the LEGO universe. Emmet must team up with a group of unlikely allies to defeat Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell) who plans on using a weapon to make everything in the universe boring and plain.
Writers/Director team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have proven with "The Lego Movie" that they are two of the brightest and most interesting writers in Hollywood today. The pair first came onto the entertainment world in 2002's MTV series "Clone High", a criminally ignored brilliant show. In 2009, they made "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" which took a small children's book and turned into a good family film. After that, they took the film version of "21 Jump Street", a project that sounded incredibly terrible on paper, and turned it into one of the funniest and most surprising films of 2012. Here, they have done it again and reached a new apex. "The Lego Movie" is so much more than any moviegoer could have expected it to be. It is a genuinely touching, interesting, and hilarious movie that will have you laughing hard.
One of the most interesting aspects of "The Lego Movie" is how gorgeous it is. A movie where every component is a LEGO brick doesn't sound like it would lead itself to cinematic imagery. The appearance is a combination of stop-motion animated and CGI and it looks perfect. LEGO block waves look far more stunning than you would guess they would be. Every scene is bright, imaginative, and excited. It is somehow active and exciting without being annoying or hard to follow.
There is something about "The Lego Movie" that will have you reduced to a giggling mess. You are constantly challenged in all the best ways possible. The film bounces between spot-on social commentary, movie/comic book references, time periods, universes, comedy, and even some touching drama. The audience, much like the lead character Emmet, is simply along for the ride. Again, on paper the idea sounds like a mess of concepts slamming into each other creating nothing but noise. Instead, we get something that hits viewers on a level we haven't felt in quite some time. This is the movie you would have created if you were a brilliant 8-year old.
To go into too much detail on "The Lego Movie" would give far too much away. Like any clever and surprising film, the surprises are better left for first-viewings. Just know that there is rarely a minute of the film where some new character isn't making an appearance and dropping some wonderful lines of dialogue. It is truly one of those times where the less you know about the story, the better. You need to see this movie even if the idea of a movie comprised of LEGO characters sounds ridiculous to you. This is the second-coming of a "Pixar-like" reign of family entertainment. Family films that don't talk down to their audiences, resort on toilet humor, or cliches. Instead, "The Lego Movie" surprises us in every scene and might even have you walking away with a new-found appreciation of creativity, both in film and in yourself.
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