Review #756: 'The LEGO Movie' (2014)

For anyone who spent a lot of their childhood banging lumps of plastic together, creating outlandish plots and dialogue for them to act out, and pretending that all that lurked beyond the edges of the bed is a sea of molten lava, then you'll get The Lego Movie. It's hyperactive, fit-inducingly-colourful, and very, very funny, but it's the message behind the movie that makes it so wonderful. It tells a silly prophetic story about a simple construction worker thought to be 'the Special' - a plot deliberately made to sound like it's the product of an imaginative child - but his world of instructions manuals, mass consumerism, moronic pop songs and diabolical sitcoms is our world: the adult world. The Lego Movie makes you want to find your inner child again, and go back to those days where you could transport yourself to another world in your bedroom by using your own brain.

Emmet (Chris Pratt) is a naive and simple everyman, routinely watching popular sitcom "Where Are My Pants?", singing along to "Everything is Awesome!", and using an instruction manual for every aspect of his life. Left behind on a construction site one night, he comes across the mysterious Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), who seems to be searching for something. After accidentally spooking her, he investigates himself, and comes across the 'Piece of Resistance', a glowing object that gives him visions and knocks him unconscious when he touches it. When he awakens, he's being interrogated by Bad Cop (Liam Neeson), and finds the Piece has attached itself to his back. Believing him to be 'the Special' from a prophecy, Wyldstyle rescues Emmet and takes him to the Gandalf-alike Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), who teaches Emmet the way to becoming a master builder.

What could have been a mindless 90-minute advertisement for a global product, The Lego Movie dodges the bullet by actually attacking mass-consumerism, placing the importance on creativity and individuality. The big bad buy is Lord Business (Will Ferrell), a helmet-wearing, caped corporate devil who wishes to control everyone by gluing them in place with 'the Krakle' (a mispronunciation of Krazy Glue), oppressing the freedom to travel between Lego worlds (including The Old West, Middle-Zealand and Cloud Cuckoo Land). This is also a stab at collectors, those strange types who like to keep their toys in boxes and display them, rather than getting them out and using them for what they were designed for. Toys may have become ornaments, ways to make easy money on eBay.

It could be argued that such satire has no place in a kids movie. But these are the same kids who now have their own iPhones, bombarded with in-game advertisements and growing up in a world of reality TV, with programmes consistently celebrating wealth, stupidity and branding. Wyldstyle, concerned that Emmet may have never had an original thought in his entire life, asks him what his favourite restaurant is. "Any chain restaurant!" he gleefully replies. This is the man who is supposed to save the world, the greatest master builder to have ever lived, only to be a master builder, you need to have an imagination to create something amazing out of nothing. The best that Emmet has come up at this point is a two-level couch. It maybe useless, illogical and absolutely pointless, but it's something.

But The Lego Movie isn't all metaphors, it's also beautifully animated (it occasionally replicates stop-motion, as if the movie is actually made of Lego bricks, although it is entirely CGI), exceptionally witty, and features an outstanding vocal cast, who make up an entourage of Lego characters based on other mediums. We have Batman (Will Arnett) as Wyldstyle's arrogant yet loveable boyfriend, and the likes of Han Solo, C-3PO, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Michelangelo the Renaissance artist and Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. It's an absolute joy, as if looking into a child's toy box to find a bunch of random and unconnected figures from years of collecting. And that sums up the film - like looking into the past and realising that that same person, who could lose hours putting on silly voices and concocting ridiculous stories, is still in there somewhere.


Directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Voices: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Liam Neeson
Country: Australia/USA/Denmark

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie