Starring: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Liam Neeson
Directed by: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Synopsis: An ordinary Lego construction worker, thought to be the prophesied ‘Special’, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the Lego universe into eternal stasis.
OK, so I’m a little late to the party with this one. But what a party it is! The Lego Movie is inventive, clever, funny and easily better than anything Pixar have done in a long time. The infuriatingly catchy main tune “Everything is Awesome” is indeed very accurate.
Emmett (Chris Pratt) is a bog standard construction worker within the Lego universe. He happily goes about his day, and is so normal and generic that no-one, not even his work colleagues, know who he is. Everything changes though when, in Life of Brian-esque fashion, Emmett gets mistaken for the ‘Special, the only person who can save the Lego universe from the destructive hand of Lord Business (Will Ferrell). He has a little help from some friends a long the way and it’s not really giving anything away to say that everything does indeed end up ‘awesome’. The thing that makes The Lego Movie such fun is everything that happens along the way.
This is very much a movie for both kids and adults. Kids will love the insanely bright colours and funny characters like UniKitty and Wyldstyle, where as grown-ups will look on admiringly as their childhood memories come flooding back. They will also laugh at all the cameo’s from their youth such as Abe Lincoln, Ninja Turtles, Batman, C3PO and Han Solo, Millhouse from The Simpsons and Superman (admittedly the likes of Batman and Star Wars are Lego franchises now anyway).
The film itself is great fun, with inspired voice casting. The likes of Pratt, Ferrell, Neeson, Banks, Arnett and Freeman are superb, and it says everything about how much people love Lego that they managed to get huge stars such as Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill to voice very minor characters. Aside from the great characters on display, the films pace doesn’t let up at all throughout the 100 minute run time. It is go, go, go. In fact, if it has a weakness maybe it’s that it moves so quick at times that it’s hard to follow what’s going on. But that is a very small complaint, as the film is so charming that I can’t see how anyone would fail to be won over.
The film has an interesting ‘twist’ in the last fifteen minutes too, which I didn’t see coming. I can’t really work out if it worked or not. I’m sure it will have divided a lot of people. The ending, as expected is rather saccharine, but, again, I can’t complain about five minutes, when the previous ninety-five had been so great.
Here’s looking forward to the next instalment…