Lego should be slow and thoughtful

Rating: 4/10 (9 February 2014)

My 5 and 6 year old kids loved this film - at least they think they did. The colours and flashing images of good old Lego were enough to convince them that it had been a wonderful experience but I remain unconvinced.
I have two main gripes with this movie: 1) Is it really necessary to have almost every scene with a thousand characters on the screen and the action flying by so fast that it just becomes a wash of gaudy colour and feels like being on a roller-coaster? There is simply too much happening on screen and they have tried to pack far too much into the movie. The result is an absolute mess whenever the action picks up beyond walking pace. Pieces are flying about and changing at such speed that it is impossible to take it in. I heard that the animators put 52-years' of combined hours into the film, which means that I assume the work is amazing. If only it had been moving at a speed where it could be appreciated. I would have loved to have seen the beautiful and clever work they did, instead it just felt like they had 4 hours of construction ideas and 90 minutes to squash them in to.
2) Does Lego really know it's audience? The basis of the film is Lego City, which is aimed at 6 to 12 year olds. However, Lego must know that most boys and girls stop playing with Duplo at about 5 and their interest in Lego as a fascination (ie. something they would want to see a movie about) rather than an occasional plaything wanes at about 8. The entire cinema was full of kids aged below 9, that much is for sure; and yet the story itself is too complex for that age group. Sure, my children felt that enjoyed the film, simply because they are wild about Lego, but when I asked them comprehension questions afterwards, they had no idea at all what the deeper storyline was or of the moral contained therein. They certainly were not able to comprehend the switch between the Lego world and Will Ferrell and his son in the basement. That may have been the stand-out theatrical switch for adults and older children viewing, but it was totally lost on my children and every other uner-8 who filled the cinema. Sure, they left saying "Emmet was cool" but they could not understand in a month of Sundays that Emmet and Finn were one and the same person.
I'm sure people will rave about this movie and it will be a huge success in spite of the fact that it is actually poorly thought out and was a real missed opportunity to create something beautiful. It seems that Lego can simply do no wrong but they should certainly stick to making blocks instead of films. However, I seem to be in a minority in thinking this film was a wasted opportunity to make something slower and more thoughtful than the hotchpotch of ideas it was. And that is what the real beauty of Lego is, not that it has infinite possibilities but that it is one of the few things that parents can still do with their children at a thoughtful and slow pace. My son has dozens of toys that are all about making noise and running about at a hundred miles an hour. When we play Lego together we sit and chat quietly and build beautiful things at a relaxed pace which enhances the quality of the time we spent together. It just seemed to me that the makers of the film have totally missed who their audience really are and also missed why parents keep turning to Lego as a great toy for their kids. It is not the action we want, it is the quality time.