Directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Starring: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson
Rated PG, 100 minutes
The early months of the year are a weird time for movies. We spend most of January and February lauding and rewarding the best movies of the previous year, while in the meantime a collection of forgettable filler movies see their releases (anyone remember “Dark Skies”?). So it’s surprising to see such a high-profile film like “The Lego Movie” come out in mid-February and not only satisfy audiences, but impress them as well. But this movie does just that.
Based, as you might guess, on the toy, “The Lego Movie” imagines a Lego universe populated with Lego people and filled with generic and unique Lego buildings. Our hero is the Lego everyman, Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt, TV’s “Parks and Recreation”), a construction worker who lives and breathes by a handy set of instructions conspicuously created by President Business (Will Ferrell, “Anchorman”). He listens to state-sponsored music, watches a state-run sitcom that repeats a single joke ad nauseum, and obeys all the instructions – just like everyone else. That is, until he finds a mysterious “piece of resistance” that makes him an unwitting part of a revolutionary movement against the President.
He soon meets Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks, “The Hunger Games”), an edgy and mysterious master builder who introduces Emmet to various other master builders who have gone into hiding. They meet in secret to figure out how to overthrow President Business before he can use an infamous weapon to crack down on all his naysayers. But Emmet and the master builders are also on the run from the President, who sends the schizophrenic Good Cop/Bad Cop (Liam Neeson, “Taken”) after them to retrieve the piece of resistance and foil the revolution.
The plot devices that follow are utterly conventional, but there is a truly unique style to their delivery. It’s a triumph for writer-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”), who embrace a story that is part adventure, part camp, part cynicism, and part sincerity. The plot points arrive exactly when and where you expect, but Lord and Miller are only too eager to point them out. Let there be no misconception: they know they’re not revolutionizing storytelling.
And yet, by so bluntly and honestly admitting as much, in a way they do upend a lot of moviemaking standards. Here we are with a story about following the rules and not following the rules and deriving pleasure from both; meanwhile, the story itself follows a strict and long-observed structure, but it also breaks its own rules. Lord and Miller have found a smart way to make the movie’s form match its content, and the result is often hilarious.
It’s much to their credit that they manage to do so while putting forth an accessible sense of humor and an original animation look. The writing is sharp, the editing sharper, and the animation rejects the Pixar ideal of 3D fluidity in favor of something that looks more constructed, befitting the world of Legos.
Then you throw in a legion of high-profile actors to do voice work – the aforementioned main characters, plus Morgan Freeman, Charlie Day, Will Arnett, Jonah Hill, Nick Offerman, Shaquille O’Neal, Channing Tatum, Alison Brie, Cobie Smulders, and more. It all comes together too easily, almost.
Maybe that’s where the movie’s singular downturn comes. The designs mesh so comfortably and the story comes together so easily that, inevitably, something is bound to hit awkwardly. And that’s exactly the case; when the movie reaches its moments of sincerity, we’re left waiting for a joke or a twist to undercut the seriousness, and towards the end of the film, those jokes and twists stop coming with the sharpness they’ve had earlier on. The moments where the movie panders are few and far between, but they are there, and not quietly.
Of course, a couple scenes that drag on late in a movie don’t undo a solid hour’s worth of high-caliber animation and comedy. “The Lego Movie” pulls you in within seconds and carries you along the way most cartoons and adventure movies only wish they could. To say the very least, this is a surprisingly good start to Hollywood’s 2014.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 2/21/14.