{"id":7862,"date":"2014-02-04T18:24:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T02:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=7862"},"modified":"2014-02-13T15:21:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-13T23:21:28","slug":"review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: &#8216;The Lego Movie&#8217; Finds Real Heart and Soul in Pop and Plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seen as an eye-rolling example of branding-mad Hollywood at its worst when first announced, <i>The Lego Movie<\/i> edged <em>slightly<\/em> towards the possibility of not being a brain-dead commercial for itself with the hiring of Chris Miller and Phillip Lord as writers and directors. Miller and Lord have a distinguished record in saving what seemed like bad ideas; they made the slim, silly book <i>Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs<\/i> into a big-but-coherent epic; they turned what could have been a rehash-reboot of <i>21 Jump<\/i> Street and made it work as meta-commentary and, yes, as a film in and unto itself. But the question remained: How do you turn Danish plastic toys from 1934 &#8212; made in the absolute absence of story, to be crafted however one wanted and placed in whatever story a child might want to tell with them &#8212; into a Hollywood movie?<\/p>\n<p>And sure, many people will tell you that Lord and Miller have pulled it off here (indeed, Warner Brothers announced a sequel before the formal opening date, so those many people are not alone) it has to be noted that suggesting Lord and Miller have &#8216;pulled it off&#8217; is a titanic understatement. I thought from Lord and Miller&#8217;s prior work (including the dizzy, silly and razor-sharp\u00a0<em>Clone High<\/em>) that they might be able to make <em>The Lego Movie<\/em> into something good-ish. And yet, what left me not merely amused but amazed, not merely diverted but instead delighted, was the level of real heart and soul Lord and Miller put into their plastic-and-pop-culture universe. Without giving away anything, let&#8217;s just say that <i>The Lego Movie<\/i> doesn&#8217;t just, as so many other kid&#8217;s entertainments do, paint its good and bad guys and their principles and their motives with a broad brush, but instead looks at their principles and motives and looks at how they might be brought together for a better world in a sequence as quietly amazing as the emotional power <i>The Princess Bride<\/i> packs into similar, equally playful but equally profound meta-storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>The plot sees everyfig Emmet (Chris Pratt, the epitome of enthusiasm), while working in the too-coordinated Brickopolis, literally stumble across the Piece de Resistance, an artifact that might be able to stop Lord Business (Will Ferrell) from turning Emmet&#8217;s corner of the Lego multiverse and then all the others into a static silent scream of petrified, lifeless perfection. Emmet&#8217;s unlikely status as the clumsy-handed chosen one means he&#8217;s found by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) &#8212; an anti-Lord Business rebel whose first words are \u201cCome with me if you want to not die&#8221; &#8212; and Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), a wise sage who intones a lot of the exposition. They&#8217;re Master Builders, and they find Emmet&#8217;s need for instructions insane and inane. But when they team up with other Master Builders like Metalbeard the Pirate (Nick Offerman) and Princess Unikitty (Alison Brie) and Benny (Charlie Day) (an astronaut from the &#8217;80s space Lego sets), to build a craft and escape Lord Business, Emmet can&#8217;t help but notice that their one ship looks like the separate plans of five people &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And this is the contradiction, explored and appreciated in the film, that makes Lego &#8212; and <i>The Lego Movie<\/i>, and life for that matter &#8212; great: Possibility needs to be guided by planning; structure and order can be enhanced by creativity. In his 1998 profile of Lego in The New Yorker, \u201cThe Joy of Bricks,\u201d Anthony Lane noted how real would-be Lego Master Builders are asked, as part of their audition, to make a perfect sphere &#8230; with square blocks. And occasionally, they somehow do, in an act of math-magic that this film resembles. There\u2019s big jokes here \u2013 the magical Lego Kingdom is called \u2018Middle Zealand\u2019 \u2013 and also tiny ones, like the fact that Benny\u2019s spaceman helmet is broken <i>precisely<\/i> where the real Lego spacepeople always had their helmets break. Cinematographers Barry Peterson and Pablo Plaisted, much like the great Dick Pope did with <i>Team America: World Police<\/i>, build a world both beautiful and mad, utterly real while being completely invented. Like the <i>South Park<\/i> \u201cImaginationland\u201d arc \u2013 including the presence of luminaries like Gandalf, Wonder Woman, Abraham Lincoln, Shaquille O\u2019Neal and Batman among the Master Builders \u2013 <i>The Lego Movie<\/i> is a story about our shared stories, and not only plays with that idea but also pays it off in a way where the intimacy proves its universality.<\/p>\n<p>Wisely &#8212; and firmly &#8212; poking holes in the tired &#8216;Chosen one&#8217; narratives that infect and inflect too many modern blockbusters, <i>The Lego Movie<\/i> is also a technical tour-de-force that&#8217;s so impressive it becomes immersive. The animation is a mix of CG, stop-motion and a few other techniques, creating a world as gloriously real and yet wonderfully silly as it can be, like a child&#8217;s dreams (and other unconscious thoughts) given bustling, goofy, sincere life. (I know some animation purists who consider mixing stop-motion and CGI heretical, but as for me, I like peanut butter and chocolate in the hands of people who know what they&#8217;re doing.) The 3D is smart and sublime and more natural than it is showy; the vocal performances are perfect, and the film&#8217;s jump to a whole other plane of existence isn&#8217;t just perfect and delightful but ultimately more smart, engaging and honestly inspiring than the shouted, over-emoted clich\u00e9 through-lines of three quarters of this year&#8217;s Oscar Best Picture Nominees. Subversive and thrilling, winking occasionally from a clear-eyed and emotionally intelligent point-of-view, <i>The Lego Movie<\/i> turns what could have been an effort in bland branding and regurgitated reinvention into a film as classic and complex as the enduring, simple plastic blocks that inspired it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seen as an eye-rolling example of branding-mad Hollywood at its worst when first announced, The Lego Movie edged slightly towards the possibility of not being a brain-dead commercial for itself with the hiring of Chris Miller and Phillip Lord as writers and directors. Miller and Lord have a distinguished record in saving what seemed like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16,14,99],"tags":[1233,1230,539,427,273,1231,1232,691],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Review: &#039;The Lego Movie&#039; Finds Real Heart and Soul in Pop and Plastic - Cinephiled<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: &#039;The Lego Movie&#039; Finds Real Heart and Soul in Pop and Plastic - Cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Seen as an eye-rolling example of branding-mad Hollywood at its worst when first announced, The Lego Movie edged slightly towards the possibility of not being a brain-dead commercial for itself with the hiring of Chris Miller and Phillip Lord as writers and directors. Miller and Lord have a distinguished record in saving what seemed like [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jamesrocchi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-02-05T02:24:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-02-13T23:21:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Lego2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James Rocchi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jamesrocchi\u200e\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James Rocchi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/\",\"name\":\"Review: 'The Lego Movie' Finds Real Heart and Soul in Pop and Plastic - Cinephiled\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Lego2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-02-05T02:24:54+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-02-13T23:21:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/#\/schema\/person\/09e4d6aecb9228b5baa167b90c56d4c7\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Lego2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Lego2.jpg\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/review-lego-movie-finds-real-heart-soul-pop-plastic\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Review: &#8216;The Lego Movie&#8217; Finds Real Heart and Soul in Pop and Plastic\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/\",\"name\":\"Cinephiled\",\"description\":\"Movie Reviews, Interviews and Analysis for Film Lovers\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/#\/schema\/person\/09e4d6aecb9228b5baa167b90c56d4c7\",\"name\":\"James Rocchi\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f811acfffcad934f22a1a077bb3b8287?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f811acfffcad934f22a1a077bb3b8287?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"caption\":\"James Rocchi\"},\"description\":\"Film critic James Rocchi is a freelance writer and columnist whose work has been published at outlets like MSN Movies &amp; The Toronto Star. 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He\u2019s written about pop culture and movies for publications like Mother Jones, the L.A. Weekly, Sharp magazine and Metro Newspapers, and he was the film critic for Netflix from 2001-2005 and the film critic for San Francisco\u2019s CBS-5 from 2005-2008. He was a senior writer for AOL\u2019s Cinematical 2005-2009, and also wrote the \u2018Rocchi\u2019s Retro Rental\u2019 column for The San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s SFGate.com. He\u2019s previously written the \u2018Now and Then\u2019 column for the website of American Movie Classics and theatrical and DVD reviews for Redbox.com. He\u2019s a \u2018Tomatometer\u201d critic at Rotten Tomatoes, and a member of the BFCA (Broadcast Film Critics of America), LAFCA (Los Angeles Film Critic\u2019s Association) and OFCS (Online Film Critics Society).","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jamesrocchi.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jamesrocchi","https:\/\/x.com\/jamesrocchi\u200e"],"url":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/author\/jrocchi\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7862"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8604,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7862\/revisions\/8604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}