Anthony's Film Review - The Lego Movie (2014)

The humor is quirky and fun, and the creativity makes the movie even better...

Someone once shared with me the following keen observation about movies: If you are creative, you can take any idea, no matter how ridiculous it is, and turn it into something great. I definitely thought of this when I went to the theater to watch The Lego Movie, an animated film based on the Lego construction block toys that have captivated children for decades. The concept of basing a movie on a toy sounds very stupid on the surface. However, the filmmakers here did a splendid job with making it funny and engaging for kids and adults alike. Basically, they were creative with their so-called stupid idea.

What makes The Lego Movie creative? For me, it's really one thing: the fictional Lego world and its inner workings. Basically, just about everything is made of Lego blocks, and I mean EVERYTHING. All of the buildings, cars, and other things we usually see in life are made of Lego blocks. Even waves in a large body of water, fire and explosions during action scenes, and red lasers being shot out of laser guns are made of Lego toy components. The only non-Lego items here are things that are dangerous to the Lego world, like chewing gum and super glue (more on the latter in a bit). As for Lego characters, we can definitely see their limited motion capabilities, like when the main character does jumping jacks that involves the arms and legs only moving front to back, but not to the side.

The plot of the movie is pretty simple and straightforward. The evil Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell), who runs a megacorporation that has its hands into so many things, is angry that the Lego world keeps changing, with things being assembled, disassembled, and reassembled over and over. He has developed a scheme to glue the entire universe so that everything stays still the way he wants them to. The only one who could possibly stop Business is a special Master Builder whom a prophecy says will save the world. That Master Builder might, in fact, be a relatively ordinary, uncreative, and untalented construction worker named Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt).

Things move at a fairly quick pace as Emmet joins various allies, including a lovely lady named Wyldstyle (voiced by Elizabeth Banks) and the prophet Vitruvius (voiced by Morgan Freeman), and evades Lord Business's police force that includes a bad cop named Bad Cop (voiced by Liam Neeson). Emmet also has to use a special red block to stop Business's glue gun. Through it all, there are jokes related to Lego-related things, like following instructions (a reference to Lego theme sets that are intended to be assembled in certain ways) and the different Lego worlds in existence (again, a reference to Lego theme sets).

As average as the story and characters may sound, there is still one thing that exceeds them. The last part of the movie is so unexpected, funny, and imaginative that it is THE reason to watch this movie. If you're going to skip this movie just because the plot seems standard, I would say that you should sit through it just so you can smile and laugh out loud at what happens in the last ten minutes. It is a scene that will surely make you like this movie more than you originally do, because it brings everything together and makes sense of all the events that have happened. (For me, it's not enough to bump my initial rating for the movie up by one star, but it's still impressive.)

Overall, The Lego Movie falls at a 7 on my 1-to-10 scale, for its humor, cleverness, and fun. It's an example of a movie that knows how to create something delightful. Or in the case of The Lego Movie, assemble and construct something delightful.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about The Lego Movie, visit the Internet Movie Database.

In addition, check out my review of The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, The Lego Batman Movie, and The Lego Ninjago Movie.