Toys Make Adult Statements To Everyone's Delight

Rating: Null/10 (20 February 2014)

Spoiler Alert: Enjoy the movie first if you don't want to be sullied by another's opinion.
Who woulda thunk it. A lego movie? About Legos?
What could be so damn interesting about legos? Like clay in a sculptors hands, everything. This movie has nothing to do with Lego the little brick building toys and kits. This movie is about personal responsibility and self reliance. The movie is anti-government and anti-just about everything else.
In this movie, you can't trust anyone but yourself and you must question every assumption forced down your throat by media and the system behind it.
The antagonist is President Business and some have posited that this means the movie is a diatribe against capitalism. Such is not the case. Is it anti-greed? You bet. Does it ask people in leadership positions to have a conscious? You bet. But it doesn't preach and it doesn't lecture. What it shows is that even a seemingly insignificant worker-cog can have a major impact in places he/she never dreamed. It's "Antz" without Woody's incessant drone.
It gives its message in an almost off handed way through characters becoming aware of incongruous statements issued as part of a larger message in the McLuhan sense.
The "Lego movie" satires the prevalence of pop culture portrayed as a detriment of us all. It spears the lack of inquisitive thinking and introspection so prevalent in the young and fervently taught in schools. It ridicules political figures who spread their lies across the airwaves with seeming impunity. In the end, it's about the relationship of a father and son where the father is all business and the son. . . well a son. It's about understanding your limits and your own delusion and having the courage to step outside of your comfy preconceived ideas and explore a greater world even though there is a KEEP OFF sign posted on the access gate.
The cinematic work is so good that it's easy to forget that this is a movie made from kids toys and like another great satirist of the green sort called Gumby, this movie uses kid's toys to deal with adult concepts in a way that is both disarming and profound. The writing of Art Clokey, done with such wit, is equalled here in many ways.
The South Park duo made a movie called "Team America: World Police" using puppets and they also so satirized modern convention both social and political that it made a great movie. Here we don't have the sexual aspect found in "Team America" but the concepts are none the less adult. Kids might get it and that is a good thing. Adults have become so preoccupied with their own bs that the world passes them by while they firmly have head ensconced in rectum.
I hope that kids take the messages in this movie to heart and instead of becoming a drone follower, step out and make a mark in life. Sometimes its easy to forget that "Keep of the Grass" is just a sign.
M10+