Smart, funny, and refreshingly original, everything is awesome in the Lego Movie

Rating: 10/10 (12 December 2014)

There's a song which plays at several points in the Lego movie called "Everything is Awesome." The song itself is a generic, unremarkable, annoyingly catchy piece of techno pop, which some of the main characters make a point of deriding. But it perfectly sums up the Lego Movie, because everything in this movie is awesome. There is so much action, so much humor, so many characters and settings. It would take all the money in Hollywood to make a movie with this many explosions, car chases, aerial chases, giant robot battles and magical worlds, not to mention the problems with continuity and logic. But with Lego none of that matters because a world made entirely out of interlocking plastic bricks has its own.
That's why a lowly construction worker can become the chosen hero by falling down a hole and touching a glowing brick, then find himself on the run from every cop in the world with a beautiful mysterious woman, all with no idea what's going on and barely more exposition than I've just given here. That's why Batman, Han Solo, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Abraham Lincoln, the 2002 NBA all-stars and a cat/unicorn thing that talks like certain infamous ponies can all be characters in the same movie, and can go from a modern city to the old west, "Middle Zealand", the bottom of the sea and a giant office building above "the void of nothingness" with no complicated explanation. Heck, in a world made of Legos it doesn't even matter why the evil Lord Business and his henchman Bad Cop want to destroy the world, or why they don't have better names than "Lord Business" and "Bad Cop." None of this matters because it just doesn't and because everything is so awesome. The frequent action scenes continually outdo each other in spectacle and ridiculousness. The jokes are constant and come in every variety from simple puns, slapstick and sight gags to subtle film and historical references, witty social commentary, and in-jokes about this movie's lack of logic. Plus the movie makes full use of the alternate logic I mentioned earlier. If something catches on fire, fire shaped Lego pieces cover it. Ocean waves are shifting piles of blue studs. Polish remover can get rid of unwanted alternate. The fact that anything can be taken apart and turned into anything else isn't just a cute gimmick; it's a major plot device. And it's hard to imagine a movie that's not in Lego featuring a decapitation and keeping a G-rating.
And then comes the twist; the kind of twist to make a young and still talented M. Night Shyamalan jealous. A twist that not only changes everything, but explains everything: the extremely loose continuity, why the characters that aren't recognizable pop culture figures are generic clichés, even why the elderly wizard's advice sounds like a mix of worn out platitudes and recent pop culture slogans. It's a twist that's so obvious in retrospect but so works perfectly anyway. What I'm saying here is that it's a really good twist. And even better is what the filmmaker's do with it, turning a sprawling fantasy/ sci-fi epic into a charming tale about the power of childlike imagination. The first hour is pure fun and will delight children of all ages. The imagination and depth of the last fifteen minutes make the Lego Movie the best animated feature since Toy Story 3.