The Lego Movie. When thinking about that name, it is clear that this movie was just made to sell more toys, a capitalist movie effort that served no purpose other than to make kids want their parents to buy them something.
After leaving the theater, my son did want me to buy him more Legos, but to be honest, it was a lot more than that and it succeeded in being a great movie and not just a commercial to sell toys. Just like with 21 Jump Street, Phil Lord and Chris Miller took something that should have been cringe worthy and came out with a fantastic movie.
Now, there are lot of people who are calling The Lego Movie the greatest animated movie in ages, one reviewer I read even calling it better than two out of three Toy Story movies. I have to disagree to a point. Yes, this movie was a fun, smart and entertaining movie, but it wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Emmet (Chris Pratt) is a normal Lego man, boring and eager to fit in and follow all the rules. However, when he meets Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), he is swept up into a world that he never knew existed and finds himself leading a rebellion against an evil dictator named Lord Business (Will Ferrell), who acts like a benevolent leader but actually has a nefarious plan involving something called KRA-GL-E to force compilation with everyone in this universe.
There was a ridiculous news analyst on Fox News who said the movie was teaching kids to be anti-business, I guess since the bad guy’s name was Lord Business, but that analyst could not have watched the movie. If he did, he might be the dumbest analyst in the world. This movie had nothing to do with evil business, it had to do with creativity and expressing oneself while not conforming to be like everyone else.
That is the message in this movie. Other than that, what we have is the exact same movie as The Matrix, where Emmet is “The One,” Wyldestyle is Trinity and Vitruvius is Morpheus by way of Gandalf. Despite this similarity, it works great. There is a lot of humor here, and even the seeming product placement cameos, like Batman, Superman, Star Wars and more, are there for a reason and never feel gratuitous.
Honestly, The Lego Movie looked really cool from the outset and anyone who liked 21 Jump Street and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs knows that Miller and Lord can do something like this and have it actually work. Well, they did it again. I don’t know if The Lego Movie is as great as everyone claims it is, but I would not be surprised if it finishes 2014 as the best animated movie of this year.
Sounds like a blast. :)
BTW, do you name if this was computer animation or stop motion using actual legos? It would be great if it were the latter.
Most of the movie is computer animation but it is made to look like stop motion and there is actually a lot of real legos during the final act of the movie