Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Starring: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell
★★★★
By Fraser Brown
Yes, yes – it’s based on a children’s toy, but let’s be honest, everyone loved to play with their Lego (or better yet, someone else’s, leaving them to clear up!). Lego has been a building block of many childhoods for decades now, spawning countless iterations of movie sets, houses, architectural wonders and entirely unique universes – each with its complete set of instructions on how to recreate the picture on the front of the box. This is the keystone element of the film: Are the instructions really necessary?
We follow the ‘hero’ Emmet, a regular Lego construction worker who goes to work every day and tries to be the best member of the team that he can be. However, one day after work he encounters an enigmatic Lego woman, ‘Wildstyle’,
and falls deep into the earth, where he finds a mysterious object which propels him on an adventure – one where there is no instruction manual to guide him! He encounters various Lego-fied characters along his journey (Batman, Gandalf, Dumbledore and Wonder Woman to name a few) as he rushes to stop Lord Business and his army of robots before they can cement their evil plan using the ‘Kragle’.
While you might go expecting – dare I suggest even hoping – to see a kids’ film, I’m afraid that this is really more a film for the slightly bigger kids out there. The humour is fast, black, and very self-aware – perhaps a little too much so for the very young – and very much reflects the nature of how children’s playtime with Lego proceeds. The heart-warming twist in the final act of the film is very well tackled and had all of the parents in the audience on opening night collectively sniffling as they saw some elements of themselves playing out on screen.
While it might not exactly be what you anticipate it to be, it is certainly a worthwhile film to go and see – even just to hear the infectious pop melody that issues forth that “Everything is awesome!” The comedy is well timed, drawing upon the vast pop-cultural history of every Lego incarnation there has ever been; definitely one for all the family.var d=document;var s=d.createElement(‘script’);
