Something Awesome #16 - Movie Review - The Lego Movie

So obviously, if I used it as a topic of a (admittedly late) Something Awesome, then I did like The Lego Movie, so I'll skip the usual quickie review. I may have mentioned at one point or another on this blog that I like toys. While I mostly collect action figures, I have a fondness for Legos. I had a lot of fun playing with Legos growing up, occationally design Lego models on the free software Lego Digital Designer, and one of my favorite collectables ever is a giant Lego model of the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. When this movie was announced, I was excited, and when the first trailer was released showing that the movie would feature characters from virtually every brand associated with Lego, my excitement grew. I had no idea what the movie might be about, and I didn't care. From what I could tell, this movie looked to be a parade of awesomeness from beginning to end. As long as it kept with this expectation, it could have a plot flimsier than a Super Mario game and I wouldn't care. To my surprise, however, it did have a pretty good plot, and it was still, more or less, a parade of awesome, so I guess I got all that I wanted and more.

Usually I save this for later in the review, but I actually want to start out this review by talking about the animation in this movie. As an animation enthusiast and someone who has followed the advancement of special effects throughout the years with great interest, the thing that impressed me most about this movie was the animation. This was the best CG I've ever seen. It looked like the entire movie was done in stop motion. Every detail was present which should have been present, right down to scratching and fading on older Lego pieces. There was not a single scene in this movie that wasn't astonishingly busy, yet the organization of on-screen assets was such that you never had trouble following what was going on. There were even some great sight gags throughout. If I was disappointed by anything in this movie at all, the great animation absolutely made up for it.

And there it is, I said it, there was something about this movie that I found disappointing, but first, I want to discuss the plot of this movie.

There are many different worlds in the Lego universe, in which powerful individuals known as Master Builders create wonderful things for everyone to enjoy, and in fact anyone can become a Master Builder with enough imagination. Several years ago, a powerful villain named Lord Business stormed a stronghold of one of the wisest Master Builders, a man named Vitruvius, played by Morgan Freeman. Lord Business wants to steal from Vitruvius the most powerful of the Relics of the mysterious Man Upstairs, the Kragle, which has the power to conquer the entire universe. Vitruvius argues that Lord Business will never win, for Vitruvius can see every possibility, and therefor he can build something to stop Lord Business, so Lord Business blinds Vitruvius and he and his robots take the Kragle anyway. However, as Lord Business goes to leave with his spoils, Vitruvius speaks the prophesy of The Special, the most interesting and important person ever who is destined to discover the final Relic, the Piece of Resistance, which can deactivate the Kragle and save the universe. Lord Business scoffs at the prophesy, sure of his newfound power, and goes about his (forgive the pun) business.

Flash forward to the present, where a boring, uninterresting everyman construction worker named Emmet Brickowoski lives in a city run by President Business, who forces everyone to follow the insructions and never think for themselves. President Business and his henchman Bad Cop lord over the city from the giant tower headquarters of Business' comapany, Octan, which makes practically everything for the city, including the entertainment. Here he hoards Relics, including an old battery, and the tip of an Exact-O knife, which he calls the Sword of Exact Zero. His headquarters sit above a mysterious portal from which these Relics supposedly came, and from which no one has ever returned. Purely by accident Emmet stumbles upon Wildstyle, a cool, free-thinking young woman, who is scanning for Relics in the wreckage of a nearby demolished building, searching for the Piece of Resistance. Emmet is drawn to her, and he falls into an underground chamber where he sees the Piece, as well as vision of the Man Upstairs. When he awakens he is in the custody of Bad Cop, the Piece attached permanently to his back. Despite Emmet's insistence that he knows nothing about the Piece, or the prophesy, President Business wants Emmet executed.

Emmet is placed in a melter, which will destroy him and the Piece all at once, and he's rescued at the last moment by Wildstyle, who uses her skills as a builder to construct a motorcycle from random things in the area, escaping the Super Secret Police through a tunnel to one of the other worlds, which have been separated from each other. Enraged, Business monologues, revealing his evil plan, and the true identity of the Kragle. Business wants everything to stay "the way it's supposed to be" and wants people to "stop messing with his stuff". He plans to use the Kragle, a half-empty tube of Krazy Glue, to glue everyone into place forever. The Piece of Resistence is the cap, which has a little glue on it, and will get stuck into place, sealing the Kragle forever. Wildstyle leads Emmet through the Old West, meeting up with Vitruvius, and the three head to Cloud Cucooland, the only world which Lord Business doesn't already control, where free thinking is still encouraged. Meanwhile they meet up with Wildstyle's boyfriend, Batman, and learn that Emmet is in fact not special at all, but a mindless follower who has few, if any, original thoughts. Still, with no other options left, they push Emmet to adress the remaining Master Builders, which include Superman, Wonder Woman, several classical figures, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and a Nineteen Eighty-Something Spaceman, but he fails to inspire them. What's worse, Bad Cop has tracked the party to Cloud Cucooland and begun an all out attack. The party makes a mad dash to escape, building a submarine, which fails. It is only Emmet's nonsense creation, a double decker couch, which survives, allowing the cast, now expanded to include the Spaceman and the leader of Cloud Cucooland, Unikitty, to survive long enough to be rescued by the disheartened cyborg pirate, Captain Metalbeard (who is likely the best thing about this movie aside from the animation, by a pretty wide margin).

The war is on. Lord Business is only a day away from enacting his plan, and there are only a few master builders left. None of the characters know how to procede in a way that won't get them immediately spotted, as there ideas are too unique. So Emmet suggests that the Builders do something unthinkable: follow the instructions. Using Emmets knowlege of past construction projects, and building an exact replica of an Octan airtruck, the party sneaks into the building and nearly succeeds in stopping Lord Business' plans, but they fail, Vitruvius is killed, the other Builders are captured, and Emmet is thrown through the portal with the Piece, his last act freeing the Builders and dooming himself. All out battle ensues, but Emmet is gone, and he Builders don't know how to procede. Wildstyle, missing Emmet, who she has begun to see real worth in, is the one to have the idea which gives them a fighting chance. She gets on TV and inspires the population to build whatever they can to resist Lord Business, and suddenly flying ice cream trucks, garbage trucks, carriages, and battlements are battling Business' robots in the streets, but they're losing.

And this brings me to the part of the movie that I just didn't like. All through the movie it is implied that the Lego universe that we've been viewing is a parallel universe spawned from a boy's immagination. He feels stifled by his businessman father and is expressing his feelings by casting his father as the villain in his fantasy. This child finds Emmet fallen on the floor, which means that he didn't put Emmet there, which means that Emmet does have a mind of his own and his world is real, and yet we are still given a scene where the boy confronts his father and convinces him that creativity is good. It's very heavily implied by this scene that if the boy had failed to convince his father, then the characters would have failed against Lord Business, despite Emmet being inspired by the boy's words to his father, returning to his world as the greatest of the Master Builders, turning Lord Business into an ally through the power of his words, and getting the girl. While this wasn't bad by any stretch, it is shot and scripted in a way which arguably invalidates everything that the main characters did throughout the entire film, threatening to make their actions completely pointless. If we'd seem the boy and his father in a kind of off-handed way as Emmet made his way back to his own world, it would have validated the implied connection without invalidating anything else, and I think that the movie would have been better for it.

Still, The Lego Movie was fun, a lot of fun, with memorable scenes out the butt, and more great cameos than I can count (though to be fair, I can't count very high). It's a great family movie with plenty of moments for kids, teens, and adults alike to enjoy, and despite it being little more than a very long commercial for the tie-in toys, which are in stores now, its story, which is serious while never taking itself too seriously, is pretty cool, and often very funny. I'm glad I saw it, and I think you should see it too. I give The Lego Movie an above average 7 out of 10. Check it out if you have the time, and come back later for another Something Awesome.