The Lego Movie-2014

Director Phil Lord, Chris Miller

Starring Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks

Scott’s Review #284

Reviewed October 24, 2015

Grade: D

A child’s movie in every sense of the word, The Lego Movie (2014) is silly and amateurish. It contains a hackneyed plot and a fast pace that makes the viewing experience quite unpleasant.

Computer-animated and primarily created by imagery, a scene involving two human beings interspersed among all the animations only makes the plot more sappy, overwrought, and predictable.

The film is a complete dud and a waste of energy save for one lone catchy song appearing throughout the film. I am perplexed why this film received mostly positive reviews as I did not share the same sentiment.

The premise is too complex for the target audience, in a Lego universe, where all of the characters are Lego pieces, a mysterious wizard- Vitruvius, attempts to protect a superweapon (Kragle) from the evil Lord Business.

While he fails, he prophesies that a person named “The Special” will one day find the Piece of Resistance capable of stopping the Kragle.

Kragle turns out to be superglue in the human world, as a cameo with Will Ferrell reveals he is the human version of Lord Business and refuses to let his young son play with Dad’s Lego set, thereby threatening to keep the set stationery with glue.

Inevitably, this leads to a tender scene with Dad and his son.

I did not find The Lego Movie engaging story-wise or visually and I was bored during most of the experience.

Admittedly, modern animated films are not my favorite genre- I miss the days of the classic Disney drawing-style films like Bambi or Dumbo both in the 1940s.

The major flaw is the frenetic pacing of the film. Did the powers that be think that all youngsters and parents dragged along suffer from attention deficit disorder? There was no time to pause and ponder what was going on in the story since immediately it was on to the next scene.

The action is non-stop so the film seemed like one long action sequence.

The main character of Emmett, a young Lego piece characterized by everyone as dull is voiced by Chris Pratt. Emmet stumbles upon a young woman named Wyldestyle looking for something at his construction site- she assumes he is The Special and they race to save the world from Lord Business.

Emmet, as far as a lead character goes, is likable enough, and predictably, a romance develops between him and Wyldestyle. We meet various creative characters like Batman and Princess Unikitty.

The film contains a sickeningly catchy song called “Everything Is Awesome” that will stick in the viewer’s head whether desired or not and that is the strongest part. It is not that the song is lyrically great or anything, but it is fun and hum along.

Overly high octane and an uninteresting plot make The Lego Movie (2014) perhaps appealing to young kids in the seven to ten range, but it is a forgettable and tedious experience for this grown-up.

The ending of the film leaves room for the inevitable sequel.

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Song-“Everything Is Awesome”