Everything is awesome, even business

Rating: 7/10 (15 February 2014)

Movies based on pre-existing toys are often the stuff of anxiety for those that grew up with them, especially when it concerns brands that are multigenerational. Will the alliance between movie studios and toy manufacturers, always driven by mutual profit, yield a viewing experience that not only serves to push kids into nagging their parents to go get them some but also to remind the older spectators as to why they themselves enjoyed the toys so much too? So far, few toy based films have succeeded on both fronts, as most of them are pretty dreadful: compare films the likes of Transformers and Battleship. Fortunately, The LEGO Movie doesn't fall into that same category of failure at all, as it enhances the feeling of joy and excitement experienced by everyone that ever built something from scratch out of the colourful little bricks. From an ideological perspective however, the motives behind the film's plot cannot helped but be questioned by mature audiences.
Of course, a movie about toys can't feature the toys themselves being played with for two hours, it needs a narrative structure to suck audiences in. The LEGO Movie introduces the character of Emmet (Chris Pratt), about as generic a LEGO minifigure as they come: typical yellow head, few physical accessories, wearing the same smile all day every day. He's got reasons to be smiling, as he believes himself to live in a utopia, courtesy of President Business (Will Ferrell) who provides everyone with instructions to live their life by, ranging from morning exercises, breakfast, buying overpriced coffee and carrying an eternal sunny disposition. The catchy national anthem 'Everything is awesome' notwithstanding, it goes without saying this existence is one big lie.
Emmet is soon drawn into a wholly different life style when he accidentally touches an unusual item that soon sticks to his back, meets a beautiful girl who looks nothing like all the other minifigures and is promptly declared an enemy of the state, necessitating him and the girl named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) to go on the run. Basically a little plastic version of The Matrix, Emmet soon learns there's another realm beyond that which he always took for granted, as many dimensions, each with a theme of its own peacefully coexist alongside each other. Unless President Business destroys them all by gluing everything together permanently, according to his own rigid instructions. Fortunately, Emmet is the 'Special', a minifigure with extraordinary master builder skills, who is the only one able to stop the shady schemes at hand. And so he teams up with the blind wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), a pirate composed of various random parts called Metal Beard (Nick Offerman) and the dickish Batman (Will Arnett), to save the LEGO worlds from blind, obedient universal conformity, to let creative freedom ring.
Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who have proved themselves to be experts in whimsical animation, The LEGO Movie proves a feast for the eyes as we behold just what you can do with the little bricks. Or at least, what you think you can do, as this film is not stop motion animated with LEGO figures, it's all computer animation designed to look like the stiff toys are moving about. Deception is key here, but we are deceived pretty well by the fabulous look, as we witness smoke made of LEGO, explosions made of LEGO, even oceans made of LEGO. It's an awe-inspiring sight for everyone who has ever tried to make LEGO look the least bit realistic and ended up being several tens of thousands of bricks too short to get anywhere. Any sense of jealousy on what the computer can create with LEGO is smothered in the film's great sense of humour, building jokes as easily as putting bricks on top of each other. Aside from the traditional number of safe but smart popcultural references, the best gags spring from our plastic heroes witty selfreflection as to being just that. Miller's and Lord's infective comedic talent, joined by the voice cast's audible delight, ensures the audience is quickly wearing a smile strikingly similar to those featured on the classic minifigures' faces.
That said, this is business too. The LEGO Movie takes its message of 'everyone should build whatever they like' seriously, clearly preferring random creativity over slavishly building stuff based on what the printed paper says it ought to look like. Which leads to an overly serious showdown as the actual status quo of the LEGO realms is revealed, when a cheerful kid confronts his ruthless father, to just let him run with his imagination. Being played by Ferrell too, clearly the unimaginative adult mind is in the same league as the childish destructive view of business as presented by the film's bad guy. Rather hypocritical, as the LEGO company is itself a major toy corporation that hasn't gotten to where it is by giving kids their product, but selling it to them for hard cash. Sure, kids can build whatever they want, but it's the business of the product via the parents that pay for it that provides that option for them. There's something eerily uneven between the movie's message and the actual state of affairs, as this movie certainly isn't about spreading the gospel of global creativity, but to make everyone involved in its production money. Of course, kids won't realize this and most parents will be too busy enjoying the movie to care, until their offspring start whining for more LEGO to play with. At that point it's hard to deny The LEGO Movie is something other than an insidiously effective 100 minute advertisement for the LEGO product.
But while watching the movie, everything is indeed awesome, as our inspiration is fueled by the grandiosely detailed design of the LEGO worlds and the sheer fun for young and old that inhabits them. And then the credits roll, and that itch to get some bricks to start building yourself is heartily felt...