Sorry, but everything is not awesome

Rating: 5/10 (7 April 2014)

Look at the risk of sounding like some type of Grinch everything is not awesome with The Lego Movie, perhaps the first ever movie to be 100 minutes of pure product placement marketing at its finest and a movie that gives all new meaning to the word ADD.
Visually fantastic and designed in an absolutely flawless way there is no doubting that The Lego Movie is a feast for the eyes and in many senses a throwback to the age in which I am sure we can all remember, the Lego years. Tapping into what might just dwell in all of us the movie does bring out a feeling of nostalgia when it comes to the many pieces of yellow bricks we have all spent time with and it's a credit to directing duo Miller and Lord that they worked so hard with the team at Animal Logic in Sydney Australia (yay go Australia!) to produce such a detailed and thriving world but with that you get the feeling someone forgot to make an engaging or in any forms original story.
Filling the film with a formidable voice cast which includes the man of the moment Chris Pratt, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Elizabeth Banks and Will Ferrell amongst many others it's sad to say that the actual characters here are not that endearing. What makes an animated movie like Toy Story or The Lion King such a joy for ages young and old is its ability to tell a meaningful story with a bunch of characters that go beyond their existence as animated beings and The Lego Movie doesn't do this. Emmett is a lame excuse for the antihero and other characters are all cookie cutter caricatures from better movies. With the characters hard to fall in love with the story also fails at producing the goods with it way too confusing for any child under the age of 10 and with a motto that seems to be throw as many jokes at the screen in as short a time as possible the film suffers from a desire to be funny far too often.
No doubt appealing to many people the world over (reviews and box office clearly attest to this) and as a kid I can imagine this being a pure visual joy, The Lego Movie is also a sad reminder than it many ways the simplicity of animated tales has been hijacked in favour of a sugar riddled tale that sadly works for children of the modern age whose attention spans are shorter than a goldfish's and want everything faster and sooner than ever before. Great work by the marketing gurus at Lego and Animal Logic, they must be laughing all the way to the yellow bricked bank.
2 and a half bricks of Lego out of 5
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