The movie, which has the look and feel of traditional stop-motion animation even though it is entirely computer-generated, takes place within a world constructed of Legos, the majority of which is a large city that prizes conformity above all else. The nominal hero is Everett (Chris Pratt), a construction worker who does everything by the book—literally. His entire daily routine is dictated to him by instructions, and he is so good at happily conforming that virtually no one notices or remembers him.

This is why it is so surprising that he is revealed to be “The Special,” a kind of Lego Chosen One who has been prophesized by the wizened and heavily bearded Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) to save the Lego world from the horrors of a terrible weapon known as the Kragle, which is under the control of the nefarious Lord Business (Will Ferrell). Everett is ripped out of his unquestioning obedience to top-down conventionality when he joins a motley group of Lego rebels dedicated to undermining Lord Business’s schemes, which are enforced by the menacing Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson). Everett is immediately drawn in by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), an intense beauty who unfortunately is in a relationship with Batman (Will Arnett), whose low-growl moodiness is played to great comic effect. Everett soon finds himself surrounded by an oddball assortment of unconventional Lego creations, including Unikitty (Alison Brie), an anime-style cat/unicorn mash-up whose creepy forced cheerfulness is a time-bomb waiting to go off, and Metal Beard (Nick Offerman), a pirate whose body now resembles an entire junk yard on legs.

The Lego Movie was written and directed by the team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who previously collaborated on the inventive storybook adaptation Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and the goofball TV-to-movie parody 21 Jump Street (2012). Their style is fast and loose and giddy, and they like to pummel you with so many rapid-fire jokes that you can’t quite catch your breath. The pop-culture references fly fast and furiously, sometimes to great effect (particularly their take on Batman, whose scowling intensity feels so wonderfully self-consciously misplaced in the colorful Lego world) and sometimes with a bit of a thud (cameos by Gandalf, Dumbledore, Shaquille O’Neal, and several Star Wars characters are good for a chuckle, but also feel a bit forced). The tone and style of the film evokes Robot Chicken, Seth Green’s loving/subversive ode to his childhood toys, but it lacks that short-format show’s brevity and perverse bite. There is much that is hilarious about The Lego Movie, but at times it also feels like too much, as if the filmmakers were simply packing in as much as they could knowing that if enough works we’ll ignore the stuff that doesn’t.

Lord and Miller have made a true po-mo stew, from the Matrix-indebted narrative structure, to the cavalcade of rat-a-tat-tat pop culture references, to the deployment of state-of-the-art technology to visually recreate old-fashioned analogue effects, although its most deliriously postmodern construct is its use of a corporate toy giant’s products to weave together an anti-corporatist comedy. Which brings us to the film’s message (or, should I say, messages), which are simultaneously so transparent and so convoluted that I can’t even begin to unravel their implications.

In short, The Lego Movie is about the importance of individuality and the need for true creativity—not the kind that follows rules and plays it safe by being like everyone else, a sentiment humorously represented within the world of the story by inane sitcoms (Where Are My Pants?) and cheesy pop tunes (“Everything is Awesome!,” a satire of bland pop inanity that is probably a bit too catch for its own good), but rather the kind of unruly, messed-up imaginative vibe that throws caution to the wind, which in the film’s terms is best represented by the willful mixing of different Lego sets and the discarding of instructions. Legos are for kids, the movie says in no uncertain terms, and they’re meant as a conduit for imaginative play, a means of exploring and storytelling and expanding horizons, even though most Legos are sold in sets that encourage kids to build the picture on the box. The fact that this message about creative freedom is inexplicably tied up with a corporate product that appears in every inch of every frame of the film makes it not just confused, but downright schizophrenic, preaching nonconformity on the one hand while encouraging its pint-sized viewers to express it by building with Lego products.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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