The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie has received so much praise. Mark Kermode noted that the film ‘was actually quite funny’, twitters been going nuts, IMDB has placed it on its Top 250 list and it has been hailed as ‘the next Toy Story.’ I figured there is no way it can be that incredible. 

What we have here is a film that everyone was so ready to not like. A film that people were even confused over. Some were wondering what the plot was, whether it was stop motion and whether Pixar or Dreamworks were involved. I can tell you now the film is good, but I think it had this huge surprise factor that had more or less disintegrated by the time I got around to seeing it.

The story is a simple one when stripped down. Chris Pratt voices a generic Lego man named Emmet who has been chosen as the Legoworld’s saviour, prophesised to defeat the evil President

 Business (Will Ferrell). We get plenty of cameos from characters owned by the Lego Company with some very established actors in the roles. Some of these include, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.

The cast is solid; honestly this film’s voice acting could not have been better. Everyone does their job well, especially Liam Neeson and Chris Pratt. Since he’s been cast in rather a lot of up and coming films I have reason to believe Chris Pratt will be a big deal soon enough. The animation for the film starts off slightly jarring but you get used to its style. You can tell the animators were going for this stop motion feel and you get that. I appreciate the time it must have got to animate as EVERYTHING you see on screen is Lego. I mean everything: smoke, water, fire, laser beams etc. Everything is made from Lego.

I guess my problem with this film was the hype. As I said before, no-one was expecting this film to be great so when it was everyone went ahead and wrote incredible reviews. I unfortunately (as much as I enjoyed the film) felt it had been built up too much, (no pun intended). The comedy is good, most of it comes from the Legofied cameos of characters we know and love.  The characters overall were fine and the animation is great so I can’t really put my finger on what it was I had a problem with. I guess if I had to choose one thing; I wasn’t crazy about the heartfelt message that felt like it was shoehorned into the film halfway through shooting. Almost as if a certain idea was suggested and the writers went crazy and ran with it.

I did like the film but unfortunately I must be getting old or something because I didn’t enjoy the film as much as I wanted to, and I love Lego. The kids in the cinema were going ape for it though, so if you have children, take them. I tell you now; this film will spawn sequels, lots of sequels. I give The Lego Movie 6.5/10.

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