Too Much Fun

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2014)

The Lego Movie sounds like a sneaky excuse for Hollywood's lack of new ideas, and so they have to pick a random popular material to adapt it on screen as an easy cash-in. I mean there is so little reason for this to exist since the product has been so popular in years, thus a full-length advertisement won't be that necessary. Fortunately, it hires the right people to bring it to life and the right choice of animation to make it look more appealing than the typical CGI animation. Overall it's all quite fun, probably too fun it sometimes forget to think through its plotting, but no one in the world will ever care about it because if a movie is having a good time, so will the audience.
The plot gives relevance to the toys: it's a fight between how they use them, it's either for playing to build more creativity or just displaying them as models. It's a clever way to justify the source material and it's obvious that the people behind it are really enjoying playing around. At some point the action becomes too fast and unstoppable which makes it difficult to concentrate at the exact storyline. But things get fixed when it finally introduces the central theme because right there it gives a whole lot of sense in this crazy world of blocks.
The animation is the landmark here. Though they're not actual toys being animated into stop-motion, but the amazing computer effects make it look like it is (a little like Flushed Away but with more life-like graphics). In spite that the action runs almost forever, they're just limitless fun. It takes you from place to place without betraying the aesthetics of the traditional stop-motion and it looks quite magnificent. The entire cast is full of delight. Chris Pratt is very likable as Emmet and that friendliness is what the character needs. Morgan Freeman brings an obvious gravity to his role. Liam Neeson and Will Ferrell are both pretty fun as the villains. And Charlie Day is just hilarious in his, although single but memorable, punchline.
The Lego Movie might be just a long advertisement and we know product placement at the large extent is the creepiest thing we might encounter at cinema's very existence, but the quality it provides is a huge pardon from that fact, because it brings a genuine heart and sincere affections to the source material which keeps it from being nothing more than a cynical cash-in blockbuster. It sometimes needs to calm down a bit, but again, no one would even bother. The Lego Movie is just filled with excitement, nostalgia, and wonderful animation that is impossible for one to dislike.