Beastly Reviews: The LEGO Movie
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I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.
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When I first saw the trailer for The LEGO Movie, I, along with every animation student at art school, thought the animation style was actually stop-motion, made with real LEGO bricks. You can imagine our disappointment when we learned the whole movie is CGI. But the disappointments stop there.
The film is a treat for those who grew up with LEGOs. If you have a ten-year-old nephew or niece, you can bring them to the movie, and you should, but they'll miss out on the film's best jokes, because they're not old enough to get them.
The script was written by the same team that created Hotel Transylvania, and it's filled with over-the-top, Invader Zim-style shouting. Its comedy gems are smart pop-culture references tucked in throughout. When WildStyle (Elizabeth Banks) recruits Emmet (Chris Pratt) to save the day, she says, "Come with me if you want to not die," a nod to the Terminator franchise. LEGO Batman is "a real artist, dark and brooding."
"This is an original song," Batman tells Emmet, blasting death metal during a thrilling car chase in the Batmobile. "It's about me being an orphan!"
The film is packed with riffs on other franchises that (like LEGO) have driven people crazy, including Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight series, Tim Burton's original Batman films (before Schumacher took over), Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings. The full list of references is covered in this cute EW article.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs), the film diminishes in scope and grandeur slightly when it becomes clear that this entire awesome LEGO world, with all its interior universes, merely exists on someone's play table. But we cheer to learn that "someone" is Will Ferrell, who, with very little screen time, delivers a heartfelt moment we never saw coming, and the film is saved.
The dictator of LEGO World, President Business, wants to control everything and "destroy the world" by glueing everything down with "The Kragle" (a tube of crazy glue), making LEGO people unable to build anew—or, for that matter, move.
Along comes the Resistance, a secret band of "Master Builders," who have been waiting for a Messiah-like figure called "The Special" to appear per an 8-year-old prophecy that we later learn is bogus (this is possibly a ballsy jab at Christianity). That "Special," quite by accident, is Emmet, an ordinary guy who isn't a Master Builder at all. Will he save the day? Will there be laughs? See the movie. Be a kid again.
Love, Beastly