Inventive as plastic blocks in the hands of a hyperactive 4 yr old

Rating: 8/10 (1 July 2014)

This 90 minute infomercial for the iconic children's toy presents about 20 minutes of clever but plodding world-building. At about that mark, the filmmakers find this whole other hyperactive gear and the jokes come faster than Vin Diesel in a street race. Enough Batman and Star Wars references fly at the audience to give a geek study group fodder for several nights. The movie runs through genres as often as Lego worlds ("Middle Zealand" being a personal favorite) while teeing up cliché- bursting one-liners as rapidly as audience members can laugh at them. Just at the point of exhaustion, they trout out Will Farrell to play a weirdly-obsessed dad outside the fourth wall. That the writers can take all the plot points, the subplots and the meta-plot and wrap it up into what actually turns out to be a warm and somehow affecting ending speaks to the level of prowess missing from the "Lost" TV show. In short, one of the few movies actually worth buying as well as best commercial ever.