To call “The Lego Movie” the greatest movie based off a toy line would be damning with faint praise – “Battleship” and “Transformers” aren’t exactly lauded as cinema classics. Seeing as how we’re only three months into the New Year, calling it the best kids’ movie this year so far is also underselling it. Both of these are accurate, certainly, but they fail to really capture just how witty, hilarious, surprisingly thoughtful and just plain fun this movie is.
It may seem like hyperbole, but “The Lego Movie” is simply one of the best movies to come out this year. In fact, it’s one of the best movies in several years.
Emmet Brickowoski, voiced by Chris Pratt, is an ordinary Lego construction mini-figure who lives in the Lego town of Bricksburg and leads a blissful life that consists of following instructions for absolutely everything. He’s never had an original thought in his life, except for maybe a couch-bunk bed combination that everyone wastes no time in telling him is the dumbest idea they’ve ever heard.
This all changes, however, when Emmet stumbles across a mysterious otherworldly object called the Piece of Resistance. Suddenly, this completely ordinary, generic guy finds himself marked as “The Special,” the single most important person on Earth.
It’s now up to Emmet to lead the Master Builders – people who can instantly take apart the surrounding Lego landscape and build whatever they imagine in seconds – against Lord Business and his diabolical plan to destroy the world by gluing it together.
If this sounds similar to the plot to a dozen films ranging from “Star Wars” to “Harry Potter,” that’s because it quite deliberately is. The movie takes great pleasure in satirizing the most famous tropes in the classic hero’s journey, most notably of a chosen one who’s inherently more important than anyone else.
Everyone quickly realizes that the “Special” they’ve all been waiting for is nobody special. Scratch that, he’s a moron who has no idea what he’s doing and barely has any imagination at all. Unsurprisingly, everyone freaks out and assumes that someone made a mistake.
There is a great deal of heart in this film. Emmet is made painfully aware of just how generic he is when his co-workers barely remember him after working with him for years. He resolves to be someone truly special, not just to save the world, but for his own sake as well. How Emmet does this and what “being special” actually means is the crux of the plot, leading to a very satisfying ending.
Also, Batman is in this. Yes, that Batman. And Superman. And Wonder Woman. Oh, and Green Lantern too.
And Abraham Lincoln, Han Solo, one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and dozens of other familiar faces from pop culture, thanks to Lego holding the rights to a variety of licenses and properties across the entertainment spectrum.
If you ever wanted to see Superman team up with Shaquille O’Neal to battle an evil police force bent on stifling creativity, then you are a very strange person, and this movie is going to make you very happy.
There’s plenty of star power behind the scenes as well, and they all sound like they’re having a blast. Morgan Freeman pokes fun at his own sagely reputation as the wise old Vivitus; Will Ferrell’s Lord Business is a fascist with a sense of humor; Liam Neeson’s hilarious playing as Bad Cop and his counterpart Good Cop, and Will Arnet’s Batman parodies Christian Bale’s gravelly voice and somberness perfectly. Elizabeth Banks also shines as Wyldstyle, the spunky, sarcastic action girl who becomes Emmet’s love interest – too bad she’s already dating Batman.
Even though the animation wasn’t actually done with Legos, you’d never guess while watching the movie. The animation is computer-animated to look as much like stop motion as possible, making the whole film look like someone painstakingly moved each and every brick in every scene, without the decades of work that actually doing that would require.
The third act has a plot twist that many reviews and even more recent trailers for the movie have urged viewers not to spoil. Of course this review will be no exception, because that plot twist is one heck of a doozy that takes an already entertaining ride and gives it a much deeper meaning and surprising emotional depth, while simultaneously raising the stakes and dramatically altering the meaning of what came before. You’ll know it when you see it, and when you do it will blow your mind.
Make no mistake; “The Lego Movie” is meant to sell Legos. There’s no denying that. However, the subversive, somewhat surprising anti-conformity message still comes through strongly. It’s a message that perhaps only a company like Lego, which has always encouraged its customers to take their models apart and make their own, could pull off.
It’s a fun, entertaining romp that moves at a mile a minute, and well-worth seeing for anyone who’s ever been a fan of Legos or just good quality entertainment.
