"The Lego Movie" review

This movie should not exist.

I mean, I'm glad it exists. The world is a better place because it exists. This is a good movie - a great movie - an awesome movie - but it's simply impossible to believe that it really does exist. I'm reminded of the time when I saw the trailer for Scott Pilgrim, and my dad turned to me and said: "Luke, that movie got made."

Because, yeah, holy crap, this movie got made. A movie with a title that basically sells the premise (spoiler: it's a movie about Lego), and from there, it's easy to be cynical. This is going to be a 90-minute commercial. Walk into a scene, pitch the product, walk out, repeat. What is this, the 80s? Are we back to the Advertainment Age of animation? How can you make a movie with mere Legos? There's no plot there! This is just further proof that Hollywood has run out of ideas. And there's no reason to not think that way.

But don't. Cast aside all preconceptions, because this movie transcends them. "How can you make a movie with mere Legos?" is a ridiculous question. These are Legos we're talking about, remember? You can make everything out of Legos.

And, yeah, that's the most immediately visible part of the movie. Basically everything in its world is made out of Legos: all of the buildings, all of the animals, all of the terrain, and all of the people. And more distinctly, everything moves like it's made of Legos: Fire is made up of those little translucent flame pieces that came in the Harry Potter sets; water "ripples" by pieces appearing and disappearing on top of each other;  the minifigure people are restricted by their construction, having stiff, rigid arms and legs, and immobile claws for hands. Remember how their torsos can extend all the way back and forward in 90 degree angles, like they're doing extreme aerobics? Yeah, that happens in this movie. Despite being made with impressively high-tech visual technology (and I do mean impressive- let me tell you, these things look unmistakably like real Legos, complete with all the scratches and imperfections), everything comes together to have the feel of a home-made "brickfilm"- something a little kid might make on their coffee table, with nothing but Lego pieces, an imagination, and a dinky old camera. As someone who, at the age of five, made an actual short film called "The Lego Movie" on his own coffee table, with nothing but Lego pieces and imagination and a dinky old camera, this movie sucked me in immediately. And after that, the story under the bricks sucked me in even more.

The crux of it is that Emmet (Chris Pratt) is an exceptionally uninteresting Lego construction worker living in a Lego world ruled by Lord/President Business (Will Ferrell), where anything and everything is controlled by rigid instructions, and anyone who goes against the instructions get "put to sleep". The population is controlled by inane entertainment like the dimwitted sitcom Where Are My Pants? (you can guess the plot) or the incredibly catchy song "Everything is Awesome". But everything is not awesome- Business's latest plan is to stop all creativity and dissent in the world using the nefarious "Kragle" device, and according to a prophecy foretold by the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), the only one who can stop it is "The Special"- the most creative, interesting, and important person in the universe, the one who finds the "Piece of Resistance", a mysterious Lego piece with unknown powers. When Emmet ends up accidentally stumbling upon said piece, he finds himself in way over his head, embarking on an adventure with the "Master Builders" of Lego to defeat Business once and for all, chased all the while by the devious Good Cop/Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) and his robot cop army.

Sound familiar to you? Yeah, no kidding. That's the whole idea. Just about everything in The Lego Movie is a skewering of recognizable, retold movie tropes, either in big ways or small ones. Some are pretty obvious: female lead Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) rescues Emmet from the robot cops by reaching out her hand and warning, "come with me if you want to- not die", Vitruvius' prophecy is basically identical to a hundred other "chosen one" plots, and Good Cop/Bad Cop is self-explanatory. But the subversiveness runs much deeper than that, to deliver a profound moral message that is not only surprisingly uncommon (I can't think of any other movie that's said it), but one that speaks to the core of what Lego, as a brand and as a lifestyle, is all about: that working according to pre-set instructions can be useful, but life works best when you think outside the box. This is said many times in many ways in the film, but if there's one line that I should ever want to quote, it'd have to be in the immortal words of the film's version of Batman: once the heroes' plan goes awry, the plastic Caped Crusader remarks, "Looks like we're going to have to wing it! .......(that's a bat pun.)"

Now, hiring voice actors is an art. It's an art that some people don't quite understand- a number of animated movies have just gone for broke and overstuffed on every celebrity that they can find, regardless of whether or not they fit the characters, because casting celebrities is how you get butts in seats, right? No. The voice has to match the character. They've got to be in sync. And on that note, I transition to: holy hell, isn't Will Arnett the absolute perfect choice to play Batman? I mean, yes, there are the other guys - Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks make for lovable leads, Morgan Freeman is the obvious pick for a wise wizard, Alison Brie and Charlie Day are hilarious if one-dimensional as Unikitty and Benny, Will Ferrell is surprisingly multi-layered as Lord Business - but really, Bat-Arnett is the one true standout. He plays a better Batman as a joke than some other actors have played him straight. And he's not the only one, either- be on the lookout for a bunch of other cameos of famous LEGO people, including a certain few other superheroes voiced by a certain duo (I'm not saying who!) that appeared in Phil Lord and Chris Miller's previous movie.

Ah, yes, Lord and Miller. At this point, it seems that their modus operandi is to make fantastic movies out of dumb ideas. A movie about food falling from the sky? Bam, the clever, heartfelt Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. An adaptation of a corny 80s TV show? Bam, the hilarious and smart 21 Jump Street. A movie based on a toy with no plot at all? Bam. We get The friggin' Lego Movie. And it works. I haven't seen a movie this fun in a good while.

The name of this blog is Awesome or Awful. I shouldn't have to tell you which one this movie is. It's Awesome. The story is awesome. The visuals are awesome. The creativity is awesome. The creators are Awesome.

Everything is Awesoooooooome!