Review #1,475: 'The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part' (2019)

Before Phil Lord and Christopher Miller surprised everybody with one of the best films of 2014, the idea of a movie based on a toy line seemed like a rather hopeless idea. Yes, the building blocks and miniature figures of Lego have been adored by both children and adults alike for decades, but they are still produced by a company whose main focus is naturally on your wallets. It felt inevitable that The Lego Movie would be a soulless feature-length advertisement, but not only did it feature some of the most eye-popping CG animation in recent memory (which also felt hand-crafted), it also melted our hearts by taking the action into the real world, where we discover that events are being conjured by the imagination of a young boy. His father, an avid collector played by Will Ferrell, had forgotten the true meaning of playtime. Lego, after all, is about whatever you want it to be.

The Lego Movie wasn't just great, it was awesome. It was also unfairly snubbed by the Academy, but with a worldwide box-office gross of just shy of $500 million, Lord and Miller's film was a huge hit and seemingly the beginning of a lucrative new big-screen franchise. The Lego Batman Movie was next, successfully capitalising on the appeal of Will Arnett's supporting character and opening up Lego's own DC universe. The juggernaut started to creak and show signs of fatigue with The Lego Ninjago Movie however, which arrived the same year as Batman, so the brand was allowed a bit of time to breathe before its next instalment. The big question is does The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part steer this yellow-tinged universe back on course, or has it burnt itself out? The good news is that this sequel is far more the former than the latter, but despite the skills of Lord and Miller on the screenplay (Mike Mitchell has moved in to direct), it does suffer slightly from sequelitis.

The end of The Lego Movie saw the arrival of the real-world family's young girl on the playing field, and with her comes unicorns and Duplo, both unwelcome arrivals in the world built up by the young boy. As a result, Bricksburg has become Apocalypseburg, a Mad Max-esque wasteland turned to dust by the invading Duplo aliens. While Wyldstyle/Lucy (Elizabeth Banks) finds the wastelands a perfect place in which to brood and gaze seriously into the distance, Emmet (Chris Pratt) maintains an upbeat attitude, enthusiastically purchasing his morning coffees and listening to remixes of his favourite song, Everything Is Awesome. Despite being plagued by visions of Armageddon, Emmet builds Lucy their dream home, but their attempts to live a normal life are scuppered by the arrival of intergalactic traveller Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz), a mini-doll from the 'Systar System' who has come to take the strongest leader away to marry Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish). Naturally, that leader is Batman, and he along with Lucy, Benny (Charlie Day), MetalBeard (Nick Offerman) and Unikitty (Alison Brie), find themselves kidnapped and taken to another galaxy.

The premise sounds fun and that's precisely what it is. It maintains the madcap energy of the first film and brings back memorable characters, throwing in more meta-jokes and visual gags than you can shake a stick at. But The Lego Movie was fun and so much more, and Lord and Miller really set the bar high for any future sequels. The Second Part keeps the family thread going, this time with Mom (Maya Rudolph) trying to keep the peace between older son and younger daughter, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. One of the funnest aspects of the original was tying to keep up the amount of characters from both pop culture and real life showing their faces, but the supporting cast seems much thinner this time around. There's a joke about Marvel not returning the calls, and in fact no characters from the world of Disney show their faces. More focus could have been given to other DC figures who show up, particularly Channing Tatum's Superman and Jonah Hill's Green Lantern, who both seem to be having a great time behind the microphone. It's still a rollicking ride, and it only seems like a slight let-down because, somehow, we have come to expect something special from these Lego romps. The film boasts a new catchy song called, um, Catchy Song, which warns 'This song's gonna get stuck inside your head." And in your head it will certainly remain, but the rest of the movie sadly won't.


Directed by: Mike Mitchell
Voices: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Maya Rudolph
Country: Denmark/Norway/Australia/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie