OK, it doesn't bring pizza to your seat, but there are plastic croissants and hotdogs, super-expensive coffee, a TV show called "Where's My Pants?" and diverse LEGO theme-neighborhoods all united by a script of high level parody and seeming self-awareness. Made by the creators of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie is NOT an OFFICIAL LEGO production, like Ninjago or Chima which are featured on the Cartoon Network, but is instead a product of Warner Brothers' animation department. The creators explain that they wanted to make an homage to the many LEGO videos made at home by fans, with a wink to the crude animation techniques used in fan videos, rather than the streamlined computer rendered productions usually made with LEGO's imprimature these days. As Ninjago begins a new series run on CN, it's fascinating to see a full-length animated feature made with the bricks but independent of the Mothership, at least on initial inspection.
The LEGO Movie has its own look, something between the stop-motion of fan videos and the seamless computer graphics of the LEGO video franchise. Perhaps the closest analogy I can make for the current explosion of LEGO video would be the waves of water which wash through The LEGO Movie. There's not a lot of water, like there is in LEGO CITY videos, rendered as digital liquid. In The Movie, the water is clearly made of individual lego bricks, often the small 1-block barrels sliding or glissading (sliding on ice) over each other in water forms. The LEGO Movie traverses many realms, as if its mission is to step on all territory. Which is exactly what LEGO appears to be doing: there is so much lego product out there now, they have cornered such a large section of toy market, that it sometimes seems the DNA of the world is turning to LEGO bricks. (Even Frank Lloyd Wright is memorialized in a lego set or two.) Don't forget that a giant plastic ocean is off the coast of Oregon. The Movie is both a celebration and a not-so-subtle critique of the prodigal bricks.
It's chaotic. The Movie starts up in the town of Bricksburg, where Emmett Hardhat begins his workday along with legions of other minifigures. It's a lockstep world where the masses are encouraged to always follow instructions yet keep a chipper attitude, as voiced in their mutual feelgood theme song "Everything is Awesome" (A Katy Perry-esque anthem) and the reality TV hit "Where's My Pants?" There are a lot of laughs as one scene follows the next in seemingly increasing speed and humor. The humor has a distinctly dark character, on a level written to adults, like old Warner Bros cartoons. There's something for everybody. They threw the kitchen sink at this project. Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO) did much of the music. Morgan Freeman voices the blind mystic AND there's a Wormhole that Emmett must fall into to recover the important Piece of Resistance. And then there's Will Farrell. It just keeps on going. Throw something at legos and it will stick.
The grand conflict between Order and Chaos is unleashed upon the audience as a tsunami of little bricks. Adults tell kids what to do all the time, kids just want to have fun. A subtle critique of lego sets where every piece has to be placed according to instructions, which is VERY fun for my 6-year-old, but only once! Then, you can take it apart and it's recombinant DNA. Or a huge bin of undifferentiated legos clogging the universe until kingdom come. A storm is brewing on the horizon.
Kids definitely thought The Movie was too long, although I tried my best to get Evan to stay for the credits, a mainstay Extra for animated films since Pixar began making use of the closing screen time. It's great to see new animation powerhouses open shop; I think Pixar is highly over-rated and have not moved the medium forward in almost a decade, since their Renderman software was a novelty. The good vs. bad morality dramas seem like ancient history. And while LEGO Movie does fit within that Rubric's Cube to some extent, it also explodes enough of your expectations to open new windows. It's great to see a fun hybrid (live action/computer) movie that tries to do so much and gives at least two sides of the story to some extent. The pros and cons of a great toy gone viral. Perhaps it's from outer space after all.
If you haven't seen The LEGO Story, a unique 17-minute history of the company, I highly recommend it: http: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdDU_BBJW9Y
