The Lego Movie

Movies, 2014, PG


Premise - It's a world of bliss for Emmett the lego-man. As long as he abides by the rules and follows the crowd everyday, then EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!! However, that means everything is also empty and unoriginal. Until, one day, everyman Emmett becomes "The Special" by finding the Piece of Resistance, unlocking a prophecy that may prevent the end of creativity and lego-building altogether.

Review - This movie is LIFE. I LOVE it. It's so incredibly intelligent. The only flaw is that this film is actually too intelligent, given the plot twist at the end (spoilers!). What could have been incredible adult social commentary was somewhat diluted at the end when we find out that this whole universe was thought up by a human child. I understand that the message is about how children are uniquely insightful about what truly matters in life (especially when it comes to creativity), but the kind of insight the film gives into capitalism, government, totalitarianism, and societal complacency does not match the mindset of a child. That said, I still loved the plot twist and I think it has a lot to say about the human drive of the imagination, innocence, and potential.

Another thing to consider is that this film doesn't just suggest that the entire world only belonged to Finn. We see the Emmett start to move himself towards the end. The Legos themselves have life, souls, and volitional control. (That volitional control perhaps explains why the Lego Universe was still allowed to have such complicated political and economic issues despite being created by a child). In almost every sense of the word, the Legos were alive, and The Man Upstairs was completely ignorant to this. Finn's father was not an intentionally cruel person, he just did not understand what he would be destroying if he glued the Legos together. He had become too narrow-minded to understand the life of toys. My parents were EXACTLY like this, and have thrown away some extremely precious toys of mine. Luckily I still have some from my childhood, and I remember their exact names, personalities, and life stories. Whenever the dad tries to say that the Legos are "just toys," it brings literal tears to my eyes. I empathize with this kid. We have the potential to imbue real spirit and soul onto material things that matter to us. (95/100)

Quote - "Business, business, business, numbers..." - Literally how I feel about anything related to business.

What to watch for - Unikitty is actually life.

If you liked this movie, I'd recommend Phineas and Ferb!

Directors: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Distribution Company: Warner Bros.

EDIT 6/9/19: I watched the sequel, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019, PG)! Not as good as the first, probably ranks in the high 80's, but it definitely put a smile on my face. I think that it was still a socially meaningful film, in this case about cooperation and tolerance. The overarching plot in this film leads to the two siblings learning to share toys together, but that lesson is more oriented towards children. I thought that the social commentary in the first film was more powerful for adults, and the parents who don't understand the imaginations of their children. Also, I know both films can break the fourth wall a bit and use self-awareness as a driving force for comedy, but this film I thought took it a bit too far sometimes. It's one thing to break the fourth wall within the lego world, but this film even had a line where the mom in our universe broke the fourth wall, which made me cringe a bit. And there wasn't enough Unikitty.

It also took me a longer time to get a sense of what the film was trying to say. There were two thematic strands related to the storyline of the older brother sharing toys with his younger sister - one about growing up and being "mature", and one about sharing. They both brought up a lot of personal memories. I have a younger sister, and I did NOT want our toys to interfere, because my storylines and characters were different than hers. In fact, we had duplicates of many of the same toys (one for me, one for her), because they had different names and stories. In the end, the boy doesn't need to prove he's "cooler" than his sister, and learns to share, which is more than I can say. However, there were jokes in the film that made it seem at first like the younger sister was being trivialized and made fun of for liking the little girl things she liked, like pop music. I know it self-corrects by the end, because who ends up being good and being bad switches, but it took me a bit to latch on.

The "maturity" storyline was a bit inconsistent because the boy just wanted to have more mature, boyish storylines (i.e. spaceships, time travel, and apocalypses instead of weddings and princesses), but there's a line thrown in there about the toys dying off with the death of imagination in an adolescent that was NOT true of this boy AT ALL, considering he built that whole apocalypse world.

Lastly, I know they tried to be progressive by adding the Princess Wanabi or whatever her name was, but the sassy black woman caricature didn't really feel progressive at all... (86/100)

Director: Mike Mitchell
Distribution Company: Warner Bros.