Lego brought to life splendidly

Rating: 9/10 (20 February 2014)

Combining excellent animation and a thoughtful story, The Lego Movie was a hugely enjoyable watch, not to mention excellent marketing for Lego. Emmet is an naive mini-figure construction worker who is happiest when he has a set of rules to follow, and takes pleasure in the most ordinary things. The spunky rebel Wyldstyle discovers and rescues Emmet when he falls into a pit at the construction site and the "piece of resistance" becomes attached to his back. Identified as the most extraordinary person who is key to saving the world, Emmet gets dragged on an adventure to defeat the evil Lord Business who wants to halt creativity and superglue everyone into place. Along the way, he traverses the different Lego realms and meets all our favourite heroes in Lego form (Batman, Wonderwoman, Shakespeare, Shaq O'Neal, Lando and company) who are master builders and held together by this common mission.
Although the defeat-the-evil-tyrant storyline is nothing fresh, this particular variation was full of humour at all the right places. I loved how these pop culture icons were woven in. And the ending was just so clever, both in terms of resolving things satisfactorily and promoting Lego. The voices were really good and the animation was truly a visual feast, bursting with colour and movement. This is a movie that will appeal to all ages.