Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Quick Impressions:
My family has been looking forward to The Lego Movie for a while now. I know we’re not the only ones. It’s been a long time since Thanksgiving. For some strange reason, few families opted to take their kids to future family classics like The Wolf of Wall Street or Inside Llewyn Davis that released on Christmas Day. Maybe January’s The Nut Job was good. I’ve heard some people say that you’d have to be a nut job to see it. All I can say about that is, I’m a nut job, and I didn’t see it. Seriously, it has been a long time since Frozen released the day before Thanksgiving.
So I’m not surprised this movie is such a big hit.
How do I know it’s a hit? We got to the theater almost forty minutes before the Saturday afternoon showtime, and the movie was sold out. After finally escaping the insanely crowded parking lot, we went to another theater where we showed up over an hour early and waited in a marathon line to fill an auditorium the size of the Coliseum that quickly reached capacity and looked like the site of the world’s biggest popcorn fight by the time the film was over. (Incidentally, I overheard the family behind us talking. They had also missed their original showtime because it had sold out—at a third theater.)
So clearly a lot of people are going to see The Lego Movie.
Now my kids love Legos, and I’m usually game for just about anything that has even the remotest possibility of being (even inconsistently) funny. And directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have been responsible for some very funny stuff (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jumpstreet). The previews for The Lego Movie showed enough promise to hook our entire family of four (though, curiously, my parents were not at all interested and didn’t seem to connect with the humor in the preview).
I’ll admit, though, that when we actually saw the movie, I was really surprised. It wasn’t just good. It was so good that I found myself thinking, Wow is it really only February 8th? This movie could have been a hit even in the summer. This actually might even be good enough to be a serious contender for the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar. (There’s a section late in the movie that I fear will disqualify it from the category, but not doing stuff to win awards jives pretty well with the pervasive themes the movie presents us with again and again.)
I expected to like The Lego Movie, but it surprised me by exceeding my expectations by far. It’s very funny, cool to look at, and loaded with heart. Kids will love it (though the first maybe twenty minutes really stressed out my five-year-old because it makes her uneasy when somebody nice feels sad). Kids who loved movies and have now grown into adults will love it, too. (I’m thirty-four and felt I was just about the target age for much of the humor.) It should go without saying that Lego enthusiasts will be on board. And if you’re a fan of D.C. Comics or any other Warner Brothers fantasy franchise (or Star Wars), then there’s so much stuff that will keep you entertained.
(I must admit to feeling a bit dumb. Not until I started writing this review did I realize that this release from Warner Brothers primarily featured geeky stuff also released by Warner Brothers. I mean, there some killer Star Wars moments, so it’s not all Warner Brothers, but we get an awful lot of D.C. Comics, The Matrix, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. (Peter Jackson’s trilogy was released theatrically by New Line Cinema, but some of the blu-ray and DVD releases are, upon checking, Warner Brothers).
So if you’re on the fence about whether to invest in any Warner Brothers films or Lego building sets, I’ve got just the 1 hour 35 minute commercial to give you the push you need. (That’s the cynical view of the film.) On the down side, yes, you will leave the theater feeling like you’ve just seen a commercial for the every Lego product used to plug every sci-fi/fantasy project ever released by Warner Brothers. But on the plus side—admit it, doesn’t that sound kind of awesome?
The Good:
I went into this movie guessing that it was a good kids’ movie that adults could also enjoy. But after watching the first half, I found myself thinking, Is this not maybe actually a movie for adults that kids can also enjoy? Seriously, there are non-stop throwaway jokes that seem targeted to an audience aged about 28-40. I mean, yes, the movie is silly and sweet, but it also has a very clear message, some canny commentary about our world, and giggle-worthy references galore that you’ll probably get instantly if you’re about thirty-five years old and a fan of popular cinema.
The references to other movies come fast and furious. The winks and nods and jokes are pretty relentless and come in a wide variety of forms. Some are much funnier than others, but there are so many that you’re bound to get a good laugh eventually.
We get jokes about how one superhero doesn’t seem to want to be dragged down by the company of another (a joke that’s funny if you consider the way the latter’s latest big screen effort was received and funnier if you pay attention to the voice actors playing the heroes). We get a magical realm of fantasy creatures called Middle Zealand. We get an evil defense plan right out of Austin Powers. We get Will Ferrell finding surprising humor in the mispronunciations of common words, as he has done before so often (and particularly when he played Megamind). We get so many references to Star Wars and The Matrix that sometimes we think this film is part of the canon of at least one of those franchises.
Perhaps my personal favorite sly reference to another film is the moment when Batman has a fight on an out-of-control, runaway train with a character voiced by Liam Neeson.
People laughed a lot during this movie. And there were a lot of people to laugh. We were packed into what I know to be the theater’s largest auditorium that isn’t a special screen, and the whole place regularly shook with laughter. Some of the jokes are highly sophisticated. Others are really dumb. The best are both sophisticated and dumb.
The premise of the film is genius. For one thing, it’s openly ripping off several other movies and then pulling all those plots together into one crazy movie. It’s almost like when creating the plot, the writers took a lot of different, variously themed building sets and combined the pieces in really surprising and novel ways. Get it? Get it? (See the movie, and you’ll get it, surely.)
Another great thing is the movie’s message. Not only do we get this great moment near the end that probably leaves all the parents in the audience blinking back tears and staring passionately in true recognition, but we also get this very astute political commentary—which is made even better by the fact that you can read it in such a way that it supports any political worldview you happen to espouse. You take the thoughtful components and put them together in a way that only you can to create something only you could make, something that perfectly reflects your truth.
Maybe right now it sounds like I’m just raving incoherently, but when you see the movie, come back to these words. The Lego Movie gets major points for verisimilitude. In The Lego Movie, the medium is the message, and the message is…
Well, I don’t want to spoil the message. But don’t worry, if you see the movie you won’t miss it. (It’s about as subtle as Spiderman’s “with great power comes great responsibility.”)
This is definitely a movie about empowerment and agency and not giving up. We find these themes a lot in kids’ movies. What I like particularly, though, is this rebuttal to the backlash against making everyone feel “special.” (So everyone is special? That’s right. Everyone is special.) But then the movie doesn’t just put forward something vague and intangible. Kids are told, “You are special. But it’s not just a way you feel. And it’s not just a way you are. What you are inside affects what you do, what you build. Because you are your own person, you make a contribution to society that no one else can.”
One of my favorite things about this film is that it gives us this jaunty song, “Everything is awesome,” and makes it seem like superficial brainwashing…and yet so terribly catchy and fun. (That’s good enough. There’s such amusing irony.) But then it somehow manages to make what seemed so superficial on the surface actually surprisingly deep and possibly even true. (You leave the theater humming the song and thinking to yourself, Wait a minute. What if everything really is awesome?)
This is a wonderfully sophisticated film that revels almost wickedly in being gleefully dumb if that’s what it takes to get a laugh.
Another soaring strength of the film, the vocal performances are top-to-bottom amazing. The characters all have such great parts. Will Arnett is at his best as Batman, one of the most consistent sources of laughs in the movie. (His introduction is one of my favorite jokes. It really shouldn’t be so funny, but my husband laughed as much as I did.)
Liam Neeson is wonderful, too, as the cop. At first I thought, Ah, so Liam Neeson’s the voice of the bad cop. Who’s playing the good cop? I listened very carefully. It took me his whole first scene before I suddenly realized with disbelieving glee, Oh my gosh! That’s also Liam Neeson. I love him in this movie.
Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, Allison Brie, and Elizabeth Banks are all terrific. Will Ferrell manages to make his part much funnier than it ought to be simply because he’s so good at making ordinary words sound so bizarre.
As lead character Emmet Brickowoski, Chris Pratt gives maybe the best performance in the film (because it’s necessary for him to make us like him and to seem ordinary simultaneously, and he seems to have the most lines since he is the protagonist). At several moments, I consciously thought, That line was weak, but Chris Pratt made it funny. Maybe he’ll get to play the lead in things more often in the future. He’s a funny guy.
The film also contains a number of absolutely perfect cameos.
Best Scene:
For some reason, I really like the introduction of Vitruvius. Far too many movies these days invite Morgan Freeman to participate and then essentially waste him. Morgan Freeman is so awesome. This movie knows exactly what to do with him and gives him a hilarious part to which he gives himself over very gamely. As played by Freeman, Vitruvious is a little bit Morpheus, a little bit Gandalf, a surprising amount Obi-Wan Kenobi, and then also a bunch of other famous figures/stock characters. That they go to the Old West first just somehow seems so perfect. (It seems almost like a nod to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.) But what really kills me is what Vitruvious is doing when they find him.
It’s hardly the film’s most clever scene, but for some reason, it won me over so completely. It’s like this delightful mix of everything set in the Old West + everything sci-fi/fantasy that has ever existed before. And Morgan Freeman gets to have so much fun. The character could be really boring, but he’s not. He’s so entertaining (and also the voice actor seems to be enjoying himself so much).
Funniest Scene:
I don’t want to give away the jokes, but for me, the best part of the movie was an extended Star Wars joke/cameo.
Best Action Sequence:
This movie has so many great action scenes, and they’re made all the more alluring by the fact that…well…they’re made of Legos. That’s just cool. There’s so much texture. It looks different from most movies out there.
I was particularly impressed by the first big escape scene, (especially the way Emmet uses his head when it really matters). I have to say, however, that my daughter nearly went berserk with laughter and joy when the Unikitty (charmingly voiced by Alison Brie) ran out of happy things to think about. My stepson laughed hard at that, too, and he really seemed to like the bit about the spaceship.
Best Scene Visually:
Vitruvius promises to take Emmet and Wyldstyle to this magical land—and then they end up at the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics. I swear!
Okay surely the filmmakers did not intend that similarity, but we came to the movie fresh from watching the opening ceremony the night before, and that is what I saw. I whispered to my stepson, “Oh my gosh! They’re in Russia!” He leaned over and repeated the joke to my husband.
All joking aside, the movie’s zany pop culture references, echoes of other films, nonstop zingers, and touching themes aside, The Lego Movie’s greatest strength of all is undoubtedly that it immerses us so entirely in a universe made of Legos.
This all looks so awesome. Why did this not happen before now? With all the immense popularity of both Lego video games and stop motion animation, I’m really surprised it took this long for a movie like this to make it to theaters.
All of the various “lands” look amazing. And the thing is, the film’s sci-fi story is so perfectly suited to the reality of many parallel worlds.
Probably the most exciting thing to see visually is the Lego water.
The Negatives:
I didn’t like the live-action portion of the film as much as I sense some people did. Now it does become quite emotionally resonant as it hits its high point, so I wouldn’t call it bad. I just didn’t like being out of the world of the story for so long. I felt like it was a major pacing-break and also a move that results in the questioning of reality (although maybe that’s the point).
Maybe, though, this segment just upsets me because I think this movie deserves serious (animated) Oscar consideration, and I’m almost positive this portion of the film will disqualify it from consideration. (The fact that the filmmakers clearly don’t care let you know that the film’s creative team believes their own message.)
The first three-fourths of the movie has such consistently fast momentum that this break is very jarring. (Intellectually, I can see that such a deus ex machina moment is actually structurally ideal and quite brilliant, but emotionally, I just didn’t like this part as much because it was slower and not as funny.)
Still it’s not like this portion of the film is horrible. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say a large number of audience members will like this portion of the movie best.
Aside from that, I don’t see much to criticize about this film. Not all of the jokes land with equal aplomb. Some “jokes” are terribly witty. Others are just kind of stupid. And occasionally we get very clever allusions that nevertheless aren’t actually funny, so it’s hard to know how to react to them or why they’re there at all. Also, why couldn’t they coax Harrison Ford to do this movie? I hope they at least tried.
Still this is emphatically the best 2014 release I’ve seen so far this year. It’s great for kids and their parents. It’s a lot of fun. It has a sweet, useful message to get across. It looks cool. And it will be sure to inspire your kids to leave the theater singing, “Everything is awesome!” (which is a nice break for those of us who’ve been hearing “Let it Go” on infinite loop since November).
Overall:
The Lego Movie is much better than I ever expected. It’s the best movie of 2014 so far. Kids and adults alike will enjoy it. In fact, I’d guess that if you’re about thirty-five (like I am), you will find the film packed with jokes designed to soar painlessly right over the top of your children’s heads. (I don’t mean that the humor is crude. I mean that it relies heavily on allusion and familiarity with other sci-fi/fantasy/adventure films.) Your kids will giggle at the silly action or goofy one-liners, and while that stuff will make you smile, too, it’s the almost non-stop references to older films and pop culture in general that will really make you laugh. The film also features a message both kids and their parents can embrace, a frustratingly catchy song, and so many cool Lego sets that you’ll immediately want to go home and spend the afternoon building (memories that last with your kids) (out of Legos) (which you will first have to buy at the store).