FILM REVIEW The Lego Movie

LET’S GET OUT OF HERE?Chris Pratt as Emmet (centre) leads a talented voice cast in ‘The Lego Movie’.

Small pieces on the big screen


Cinema
Daniel Carey

IN the lobby of the Willis Tower, the Chicago skyscraper formerly known as the Sears Tower, the building has been recreated using Lego. Over 50,000 pieces were used in the construction of the model, which stands 20 feet high and made almost as big an impression on me as the view from the 102nd floor of the real thing.
Proof that there’s almost nothing that can’t be realised using the colourful interlocking plastic bricks was made clear when ITV recently ran an entire ad break comprised purely of Lego figures. That was to mark the release of ‘The Lego Movie’, out just in time for the mid-term break, but a flick that many adults will get a great kick out of. And, mercifully, it never feels like a 100-minute commercial.
It tells the story of Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt from ‘Parks and Recreation’), an ordinary construction worker whose discovery of the ‘piece of resistance’ means he is the key to saving the world. Emmet is an unlikely hero whose main contribution to society is creating a double-decker couch, but he ends up leading a band of superheroes who aim to stop the evil President Business (Will Ferrell) from ending the world.
When we first meet Emmet, he’s happy to follow the rules of his ultra-regimented society, singing ‘Everything is awesome’, laughing at the TV show ‘Where Are My Pants?’ and so incapable of original thought that, when finding himself in unfamiliar territory, he wonders: “What do I do? I don’t have my instructions!”
Cast in the role of saviour by a prophecy (rather like Neo in ‘The Matrix’), Emmet comes up against Liam Neeson’s Bad Cop/Good Cop (who are the same person and, as his evil half, gets to say things like ‘Rest in pieces!’). He escapes with the help of Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), who reveals his destiny as The Special, the ‘most important, talented, extraordinary person in the universe’. He can, she adds, drop the act of being ‘a useless nobody’.
They meet Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman, channelling Morpheus from ‘The Matrix’), who urges him to ‘create the instructions in your mind’. Wyldstyle’s boyfriend turns out to be Batman, and the trio head for an assembly of superheroes. There, the expectant crowd includes Superman, Green Lantern, Robin Hood and Wonder Woman, and the screenplay from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller has fun with the cross-cultural potential of Lego. In what other universe could the main character shout: “Abraham Lincoln, you bring your space chair right back here!”?
Some of the zaniness of the 2009 animated feature ‘Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs’ (which Lord and Miller also wrote and directed) is evident in lines such as an amended first law of the sea – “Never place your rear end on a pirate’s face” (which sounds like good advice to me). But there are also echoes of ‘Toy Story’ and the picture is a cri de coeur for creativity and chaos while not forgetting the value of teamwork.
Overall, it’s a whole lot of fun. A good story, plenty of gags, great attention to detail in the animation, and wonderfully imaginative. Wikipedia tells us that as of 2013, around 560 billion Lego parts had been produced. Long may that figure grow.
I once had a college lecturer who would wait 30 seconds before responding to knocks on her door. A friend had a theory that she took that time to clear away her Lego pieces. If there was ever any truth to that rumour, this movie will surely convince her to root them out again.

Rating 8 out of 10