(Almost) Everything is awesome in "The LEGO Movie"

I've always loved LEGOs. They were some of my first toys (I believe my cousins introduced me). And LEGO Island was the first video game of any kind I ever played (it taught me many things, such as the word "information," and not to give hot pizza to prisoners behind bars). LEGO Loco, a train-based LEGO video game that caught me right in the middle of my train phase (I think most young boys had one of those) was also great; it was probably the first time I learned about the Loch Ness Monster, and therefore may have introduced me to the paranormal, in which I have since become very interested. I thank my parents for encouraging my love of LEGOs, and especially for enduring the terrible pain of stepping on my stray bricks.

I loved LEGO sets of all kinds, but especially Star Wars, Harry Potter (one of the only highlights of the day after I fractured my collarbone as a youngster was going to the store for a Sorting Hat LEGO set) and Bionicle (I once won a Bionicle trivia contest at my local Toys 'R' Us, though it was sparsely-attended). I can't even begin to estimate how many friendships I strengthened--and maybe even made!--bonding over LEGOs, or how much LEGOs influenced my development.

In this, I suspect I am not alone. The numbers prove it: As of 2014, LEGO is the biggest toy company in the world; and LEGOs have been a better investment than gold since 2000. As does my own early life. Though I would both follow instructions and build free-form, I preferred the latter. Unfortunately, as I grew older, my LEGOs receded farther and farther into the dark recesses of my basement; I certainly couldn't take them to college with me. Thus, my LEGO self died out somewhat, or at least went into hibernation.

With this exception of this great Christmas gift from a few years ago.

Still, when I heard a few years back that The LEGO Movie was in development, I had enough of a stake in the toys that it both excited and worried me: excited, because it meant another LEGO brick would drop into my life; worried, because I had no idea how one could make an entire movie out of a fundamentally, intentionally plot-free toy without proving a naked cash-grab that would hew too closely to one of its pre-licensed fictional properties and thus become predictable and shallow. But when the movie actually came out in 2014, it dispelled these--and most other--doubts. Yet I did not catch it in theaters, nor had I been able to in any other medium.

Until, that is, a snowstorm trapped me in my house for several days, allowing me to cross several movies off my lifetime watch list (stay tuned for reviews of Attack the Block and Altered States, two other movies I finally caught thanks to the snow). But my first priority was The LEGO Movie. I had to see if critics and audiences were right about it. Boy were they ever. The LEGO Movie, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, is the story of Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt, who, between this and Guardians of the Galaxy, had a good 2014), a completely average construction worker living in a rigidly organized, consumerist, LEGO utopia (?) presided over by the evil Lord Business (Will Ferrell, in what turns out not to be his only role in the movie) where "everything is awesome" because everyone follows the instructions.



But when Emmet strays from his instructions and accidentally discovers a mythical object, a vision* starts him off on an epic quest with the Master Builders, LEGO people who don't follow the instructions and can manipulate their LEGO environments at will, to overthrow the tyranny of Lord Business and thwart his plan to glue their entire world in place forever.

It has all the trappings--perhaps too many--of a typical quest narrative. But relentlessly clever, humorous writing and excellent animation (as far as I can tell, everything in the movie is LEGO-based; even the people move like LEGO people, similar to the 8-bit mimicking animation in Wreck-It-Ralph) elevate it far above that. A stellar comedic voice cast (including, in addition to the above, Morgan Freeman, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Liam Neeson, Nick Offerman, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Charlie Day, and many others) also helps. As does a level of pop cultural cross-pollination--enabled by LEGO's preexisting licensing agreements--impossible for any other movie (for now, anyway) that allows major roles for Batman (perfectly voiced by Arnett), and cameos by Superman (Tatum), Green Lantern (Hill), Gandalf, Dumbledore, Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, and others.

Most surprising to me, and perhaps most hilarious (and most ironic, given that this film's directors are now directing a Han Solo-focused Star Wars movie, about which more soon) is a scene in which Han Solo (not Harrison Ford), Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), Chewbacca, and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) welcome Batman onto the Millennium Falcon, which I believe officially qualifies as one of the coolest things to happen in any movie ever.


 
But The LEGO Movie isn't great solely for its humor and its pop culture references (though they help). It also has some very clever writing that can stand alone.



It also has some of the most impressive world-building this side of Wreck-It-Ralph. And thanks to a twist near the end that brings the action into the real world, moreover, it becomes a poignant meditation on the father-son dynamic. We learn that (almost**) the entire plot is the unfolding of a young boy's instruction-rejecting imagination against the rigid permanence of his father's (Ferrell, again) LEGO creation (he wants to follow the instructions and keep everything glued together once completed, a desire his son imagines as the tyranny of Lord Business).

Though I knew about this twist before I saw the movie, and determined as honestly as I could within myself that I would have caught the many hints to it throughout the movie without this foreknowledge (if perhaps not predicted what exactly they were hinting), I was still surprised and affected by their ultimate manifestation. Perhaps the only other defect of the movie in addition to its somewhat basic quest narrative is that it creates a few too many climaxes, making things a bit too messy, but all ties together neatly in the end.

But by far the most impressive thing about The LEGO Movie is that it took a toy with no inherent plot and made it into not only a great movie, but one that takes a side in the great instructions debate, turns it into a (somewhat philosophically vague) treatment of the much older individuality/creativity vs. community/conformity debate, and, above all, recaptures how it feels to play with LEGOs. It's enough to make this 22-year-old want to go back into his basement, take out his old LEGOs, dump them all on the ground, and see what happens. And maybe I will.

Fortunately for my parents (and now me), there are anti-LEGO slippers now.

*The "mythical object" that Emmet discovers actually turns out to be the cap to a real-world tube of glue. Touching this is what inspires his vision. But since it's glue, is it possible that he just got close enough to the glue that, although a relatively small amount for a human, may have sufficed to provide a sort of high to a tiny LEGO dude? In other words, did Emmet pick the right week to start sniffing glue?
**The movie is sort of unclear about the relation of the free will of its LEGO characters to the real-world child's imagination. The plot is supposed to be mostly the unfolding of a real-world family drama, but Emmet is capable of limited agency when he (briefly) enters the real world. What does it mean? Probably nothing.
Probably...