the lego movie reviews

The Lego Movie

"The Lego Movie"

Everything in “The Lego Movie” is, indeed, awesome.

Awesome as in imagine if “ Toy Story ” were spoofed by Mel Brooks after he ate magic mushrooms while reading George Orwell’s 1984.

Awesome as in the sort of silly yet wily kid-appropriate PG-rated performance by Will Ferrell that you’ve been waiting for ever since “ Elf ” came out more than a decade ago.

Awesome as in geeking out over the sight of a grim little Batman hitching a ride on the Millennium Falcon piloted by a smart-ass little Han Solo—with a suavely plastic Lando Calrissian in a flash of a cameo.

To be honest, my enthusiastic reaction might be slightly skewed by the fact that “Everything Is Awesome” is both the title and most insidious lyric of a catchier-than-a-Norovirus musical number whose sweeping camerawork over a Lego-ized cityscape is almost as impressive as the opening sequence of “ West Side Story “. Somehow, the dastardly ditty has taken up permanent residence in my brain, snaking into the cubby hole previously occupied by the Pee-wee’s Playhouse TV-show theme.

Normally, I oppose the trend of plaything-based moviemaking, especially when the results are as brain-numbingly awful as “ Transformers “, “G.I. Joe” and “ Battleship “. But if those uninspired efforts had featured not just Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja but also Michelangelo the ultimate Renaissance artist as they fight for the greater good of interlocking mankind, maybe they would have changed my mind, too.

Besides, with so many animation powerhouses settling for easy-money sequels lately (we mean you, Pixar, DreamWorks, Universal and 20 th Century Fox), it is exceedingly cool that a major-studio family film refuses to simply capitalize on merchandising spinoffs by offering an oppressive 100-minute commercial. Instead, “The Lego Movie” manages to be a smartly subversive satire about the drawbacks of conformity and following the rules while celebrating the power of imagination and individuality. It still might be a 100-minute commercial, but at least it’s a highly entertaining and, most surprisingly, a thoughtful one with in-jokes that snap, crackle and zoom by at warp speed.

This surreal 3-D computer-animated pop-cultural cosmos overseen by directors/co-writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller , the talented team behind 2009’s “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs”, takes off from those countless amateur fan-produced stop-motion films found online before concluding with rather ingenious live-action interlude.

For once, an overly familiar plot is intended to be overly familiar as this action comedy lampoons nearly every fantasy-sci-fi-comic-book-pirate-cowboy movie cliché that has been in existence at least since George Lucas and Steven Spielberg turned Hollywood into a blockbuster-producing boy-toy factory.

Our unlikely hero is Emmet (earnestly and engagingly voiced by Chris Pratt of TV’s “Parks and Recreation”), an unremarkable construction worker who is perfectly happy with his staid generic existence as an ordinary citizen of the metropolis of Bricksburg. As is the custom among his peers, Emmet doesn’t just avoid overthinking. He barely thinks at all.

But after dawdling on a work site after hours, Emmet finds himself tumbling into an underworld where a wise Obi-Wan Kenobi-type wizard named Vitruvius ( Morgan Freeman , mocking his history of movie mentorships) mistakenly declares him to be the Special, the greatest Master Builder of them all. Unfortunately, special is exactly what Emmet isn’t and he appears to be ill-equipped to battle the monstrous foe at hand. That would be Ferrell’s President Business, a maniacal manipulator whose looming overlord alter-ego is a sly nod at the actor’s despot in “ Megamind “.

The minute that a swivel-headed henchman named Bad Cop/Good Cop starts spouting menacing threats in Liam Neeson’s Irish-inflected rumble, you know that a “release the Kraken!” joke can’t be far behind. And “The Lego Movie” does not disappoint, as Ferrell’s control-freak villain aims to glue all the pieces of the city in place permanently—no freeform deviations allowed.

From there, Emmet and would-be love interest Wyldstyle—a tough-chick cross between “ The Matrix “‘s Trinity and Joan Jett blessed with Elizabeth Banks’s vocal spunk—enter a surreal hodge-podge universe where Lord of the Rings-style warriors, Star Wars and Harry Potter characters, superheroes, Abraham Lincoln and even basketball star Shaquille O'Neal (a legacy of an actual 2003 NBA-sanctioned Lego set) join forces to foil President Business’s nefarious plan.

It isn’t fair to reveal what happens next, other than to say that it continues to be, yes, awesome despite a paucity of female characters (toothache-sweet Unikitty who presides over Cloud Cuckoo Land doesn’t quite count) and maybe a bit too much crash-boom bombast.

Alas, I would be remiss if I didn’t issue a heads-up to parents: “The Lego Movie”‘s tie-ins include 17 new building sets and 16 new characters. To ensure that your child’s college fund is safe and your bills get paid this month, I would urge you to seek out a theater in a galaxy far, far away from a toy store.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

• Will Arnett as Batman (voice)
• Chris Pratt as Emmet (voice)
• Will Ferrell as President Business (voice)
• Alison Brie as Uni-Kitty (voice)
• Charlie Day as Spaceman Benny (voice)
• Channing Tatum as Superman (voice)
• Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius (voice)
• Cobie Smulders as Wonder Woman (voice)
• Nick Offerman as Craggy (voice)
• Jonah Hill as Green Lantern (voice)
• Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle (voice)
• Liam Neeson as Bad Cop/Good cop (voice)
• Chris Miller
• Dan Hageman
• Kevin Hageman

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I loved LEGO when I was a kid.  I discovered a bag of LEGO bricks on a high shelf, and my collection expanded from there.  I was always an "instructions" kid, although I did try to combine sets from time to time.  But I always liked the minifigures the best.  I liked using them to come up with stories and adventures.  I mention all of this because The LEGO Movie is the best of all worlds.  Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have shown their genius once again through their unique blend of wit, humor, and heart to go far beyond what others would have boiled down to a crass, exploitative toy commercial.  While the movie will undoubtedly sell toys, it manages to respect the "instructions" kids while encouraging them to go beyond the box, build their own worlds, and discover their own creativity and personality through these adorable little toys.  But rather than aim for cheap sentiment, The LEGO Movie earns every emotion in a story that's unabashedly silly and constantly hilarious.

Emmet ( Chris Pratt ) is the most ordinary "person" (i.e. minifigure) in his city of Bricksburg and probably the world.  He follows the instructions for everything, loves the most popular stuff such as the lame TV show "Where Are My Pants?" and the infectiously catchy pop song "Everything Is Awesome", and no one remembers him even though he's unfailingly friendly.  When he stumbles into a pit at his construction job, he unintentionally finds the "Piece of Resistance", which means he's meant to fulfill the prophecy set down by the wise "Master Builder" Vitruvius ( Morgan Freeman ) to defeat the evil Lord Business ( Will Ferrell ).  When the rebels discover Emmet's painfully ordinary, they must work to help him become extraordinary.

As with their previous two movies, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street , Miller and Lord have unquestionably proven themselves as brilliant storytellers who know how to play against expectations.  A LEGO movie seems like it's designed to sell toys, and it will.  It will also sell toys beyond the " LEGO Movie " line since part of what's being encouraged is mixing and matching toys from different sets.  But rather than a cynical "BUY MORE FOR MORE FUN", the movie celebrates how funny and joyful those combinations can be.  The movie treks across different LEGO worlds from "The Old West" to pirates to an adorably cute world where anyone is free to build what they want.  Yes, LEGO has become more license-heavy in recent years, but at the Council of Master Builders, it's delightful to see Superman ( Channing Tatum ) standing alongside William Shakespeare.  When Abraham Lincoln ( Will Forte ) flies away in a rocket chair, it makes total sense because that's the kind of freedom and creativity the movie is ultimately encouraging.

It's fine to draw from the instructions, but as we see in Emmet's case, it can also stifle creativity.  His most creative thought is a "Double Decker couch, so everyone can watch TV and be buddies!"  Meanwhile, the Master Builds are clicking together everything they can find and even, in the case of Vitruvius, going beyond the LEGO world by wielding a staff that's apparently a mostly-used lollipop.  The filmmakers could have undermined their point about creativity by only using bricks.  Instead, they say that creativity doesn't, and shouldn't, stop at the box.  Also, it's more entertaining to bring in these outside elements like q-tips and markers.

And without spoiling anything, they've taken the same clever twists to their screenplay.  The plot follows the Hero's Journey to the point where you feel like someone is going to break out an instructional manual, which would be hypocritical to the whole endeavor.  But just when you think you've got Lord and Miller pegged, they change the entire game in a way that's kind of mind-blowing.  The filmmakers could have simply leaned on name-brand recognition and called it a day, and instead decided to do something surprising and brave.  Their risk absolutely pays off.

The same goes for the stop-motion style animation.  When the traditional mode of thinking dictates that all animation should be smooth and unobtrusive, Lord and Miller decided to pay tribute to all of the stop-motion LEGO filmmakers who came before.  These pioneering LEGO fans took the toy they loved, and brought it to life bit-by-bit.  While The LEGO Movie was mostly done only in the style of stop-motion, they did it so well that the filmmakers were able to sneak in shots that were actually done with stop-motion animation.  Lord and Miller not only took the style, but then they used a bright, vibrant, gorgeous color palette to further bring the world to life with an emphasis on the plastic details of the figure.  All of these touches not only help to bring the world to life, but they make LEGO fans like me flashback to the minfigures we loved and played with as kids.

And yet for all of the movie's thoughtful subtext and construction, the story's primary interest is on lovable characters with distinct personalities and a lot of emotion.  The voice acting is superb, and Emmet is incredibly endearing.  His warmth and generosity speaks to people who do all of the right things, but end up going unnoticed anyway.  Additionally, his ineptitude is, like almost every other joke in the film, a blast.  The LEGO Movie has a big heart to back up its even big brain.

At the very least, The LEGO Movie gave me a big smile on my face from the first frame to the end of the credits (and you should stay to the end of the credits).  At its best, The LEGO Movie had me struggling to breathe from laughing so hard.  I was slightly worried the film's best jokes may have been in the trailers, but they're only the tip of the iceberg in a movie that is constantly clever and courageously absurd.  One of my favorite lines of the year is one that comes out of nowhere between two characters talking in a saloon.  Some people won't find it as funny as I did, but it speaks to Lord and Miller being on my comic wavelength like few others.  However, it's not a divisive comedy, and there are plenty of jokes that kids and adults will enjoy.

The LEGO Movie is something special.  It takes me back to when I loved LEGO as a kid and reminds me why I still enjoy them as an adult.  Lord and Miller made a movie about imagination that's truly imaginative and literally thinks outside the box.  It constantly plays against expectations and does so in a smart, understated, and above all, entertaining manner.  They took a bunch of plastic pieces and assembled them into something that's far beyond what other filmmakers would have even attempted.  They embraced their creativity and encouraged their audience to do the same.  It all clicks together perfectly.

• Will Ferrell
• Channing Tatum

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Lego Movie

An ordinary LEGO construction worker, thought to be the prophesied as "special", is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the LEGO universe into eternal stasis. An ordinary LEGO construction worker, thought to be the prophesied as "special", is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the LEGO universe into eternal stasis. An ordinary LEGO construction worker, thought to be the prophesied as "special", is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the LEGO universe into eternal stasis.

• Christopher Miller
• Dan Hageman
• Chris Pratt
• Will Ferrell
• Elizabeth Banks
• 617 User reviews
• 471 Critic reviews
• 83 Metascore
• 72 wins & 67 nominations total

Top cast 37

• Emmet Brickowski

• Lord Business

• Octan Robot

• Abraham Lincoln
• (as Orville Forte)

• Green Lantern

• Foreman Jim
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The term "Master Builder" is actually an official designation by the LEGO Company; per their website, "LEGO® Master Builders are the highly-trained and super-creative builders who design all of the official LEGO sets. Other LEGO Master Builders create giant, detailed sculptures out of LEGO bricks for LEGOLAND® Parks and special events all around the world."
• Goofs The glue on Emmet's back disappears and reappears between shots.

Batman : I only work in black and sometimes very, very dark grey.

• Crazy credits The main-on-end credits were animated in stop-motion, unlike the rest of the movie's CGI. The sequence was created by the studio Alma Mater with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and took almost a year to produce.
• Alternate versions This movie is also released in 3D. One noticeable difference is the text of the "5 Hours Later" time card zooms slightly forward.
• Connections Edited into The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)
• Soundtracks Everything is Awesome (The Awesome!! Version) Written by Shawn Patterson Additional lyrics by Bartholomew (as Joshua Bartholomew) and Lisa Harriton Rap lyrics by Akiva Schaffer , Andy Samberg , and Jorma Taccone Produced by Bartholomew Additional production by Akiva Schaffer Mixed by Jason Goldstein Performed by Jo Li (as Jo-Li) featuring The Lonely Island

User reviews 617

• Dec 28, 2018
• February 7, 2014 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Official Twitter
• Lego: The Piece of Resistance
• Disney Studios, Moore Park, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• Warner Bros.
• Village Roadshow Pictures
• RatPac-Dune Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $60,000,000 (estimated)
• $257,966,122
• $69,050,279
• Feb 9, 2014
• $470,759,687

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 40 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• 2.35 : 1 (original ratio)
• 2.39 : 1 (original ratio)

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‘the lego movie’: film review.

Directors-screenwriters Phil Lord and Christopher Miller bring the building bricks to life with a voicecast that includes Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman.

By THR Staff

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After successfully testing the computer-animated waters on the smaller screen with the likes of LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Ninjago , not to mention a series of hit video games, everybody’s favorite Danish interlocking brick system has finally been transformed into a big 3D animated feature—with wildly entertaining results.

Arriving at a time when feature animation was looking and feeling mighty anemic—essentially reconnecting the same dots until the next big thing comes along— The LEGO Movie shows ’em how it’s done.

It’s a non-stop blast from beginning to end, jam-packed with a wacky irreverence, dazzling state-of-the-art CGI (courtesy of Animal Logic) and a pitch-perfect voice cast headed by Chris Pratt , Elizabeth Banks and Will Ferrell .

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Backed by an army of executive producers, the Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow presentation should translate beautifully into whatever corner of the earth it plays, with a laugh-and-you’ll-likely-miss-something potential for repeat viewings.

Not that there was ever much doubt about co-directors and writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller being the right guys for the job, having previously surprised with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street , but their gift for inspired lunacy hits fresh, imaginative heights in the anything-goes LEGO universe.

Serving as the idealistic heart of the picture is Emmet (endearingly voiced by Pratt) a sweet but generic regular guy of a LEGO minifigure with a prodigiously empty mind, blissfully content to let instruction manuals be his guide.

And that’s just the way President Business (Ferrell) wants it.  A control freak of a CEO with world domination on his mind, his obsessive disdain for creative expression has turned him into the maniacal Lord Business, whose bidding his carried out by the swivel-headed Bad Cop/Good Cop ( Liam Neeson ).

But Emmet’s non-descript life is about to find meaning in a construction excavation pit when he stumbles across the elusive Piece of Resistance and, in the process, is earmarked as The Special–the one prophesied to reunite the great Master Builders and remove Lord Business from power before he destroys their various worlds.

Joining Emmet on his reluctant quest is the sassy, butt-kicking Wyldstyle (Banks), whose rebellious streak is represented by the hot-pink and turquoise ones in her hair; and Vitruvius, a blind, hippy-dippy sage (a hilariously loose Morgan Freeman ).

They’re soon joined by Wyldstyle’s bf, Batman (a terrifically self-absorbed Will Arnett), and the cringingly sweet Unikitty (Alison Brie) who presides over the no-rules Cloud Cuckoo Land, along with numerous special guests.

Not only do Master Builders Lord & Miller, who crafted the script from a story by Dan Hageman & Kevin Hageman ( Hotel Transylvania ) manage keep all those careening bricks in the air with crack comic precision, they sneak in an affecting third act reveal that’s absolutely in lockstep with the venerable brand’s creative spirit.

It’s also vibrantly captured by those millions of LEGO pieces rendered, brick-by-brick, by Australia’s Animal Logic, whether taking the inherently three-dimensional form of a fiery explosion or, most vividly, a stormy, undulating LEGO sea.

Production companies: Village Roadshow Pictures, LEGO System A/S, Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures Voice cast: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman Directors-screenwriters: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller Executive producers: Jill Wilfert, Matthew Ashton, Kathleen Fleming, Allison Abbate, Zareh Nalbandian, Jon Burton, Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Seanne Winslow, Matt Skiena, Bruce Berman Producers: Dan Lin, Roy Lee Director of photography: Pablo Plaisted Production designer: Grant Freckelton Music: Mark Mothersbaugh Editors: David Burrows, Chris McKay Rated PG, 100 minutes.

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'The Lego Movie' review: the best film about blocks you'll ever see

A toy story that's not really about the toys.

By David Pierce on February 10, 2014 10:28 am 84 Comments

When I think about the house I grew up in — my football-themed bedroom, the big family room, the yard — there are always Lego bricks everywhere. And I’m clearly not alone, because everyone in my packed theater watching The Lego Movie this weekend seemed to have the same experience I did: a 100-minute exercise in nostalgia, rendered in RealD 3D.

It's the first big-budget Lego movie in the company's 80-year history, made painstakingly over five years in concert with writer–director duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Its cast list is riddled with A-list actors, its marketing is massive and unavoidable — and it's a shockingly fun, remarkably entertaining movie. Sure, it's an hour and a half of advertising for Lego, but if this is the future of marketing, sign me up.

The movie follows Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt), a normal guy with a normal job and a normal life. As soon as he wakes up, he breaks out the instruction manual. Jumping jacks? Check. $37 coffee? Check. Wave to neighbors? Check. He follows the speed limit, works diligently at his construction job, and every once in a while wonders if there might be more to life than this. One night as he's leaving his worksite he meets a pretty girl named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), and finds a mysterious object called The Piece of Resistance. The one who finds it, it's been prophesied, is The Special: the smartest, most talented, most interesting person in the world, and the one who will save everyone from President Business (Will Ferrell) and his evil plan. But to do that he needs to ditch the instructions and go freestyle.

"Everything is Awesome," the movie's theme and the catchiest song you'll ever hear.

It's not exactly breaking new ground — normal guy learns he's special, saves the world — and it does come with a fair amount of heavy-handed preaching about how everyone is special and we can all be anything we want. Like any good family-friendly movie, there's a love story, there are jokes both obvious and subtle, and there's a surprisingly tender third act. But everything about the way The Lego Movie unfolds feels fresh, with Lord and Miller doing their brand-building duty while simultaneously rolling their eyes at it. Where a movie like The Internship is one long bow at the altar of Google, The Lego Movie frequently cuts to awkward scenes where minifigures can’t quite figure out how to hold hands, or the revered "relics" that are mostly just gross things you might accidentally find in a box full of Lego bricks. It’s loving throughout, but it’s edgy and self-deprecating enough to never feel contrived.

Everything in the movie from elaborate cities to puffs of smoke is made of Lego, and it's all fair game: at one point Wyldstyle builds a motorcycle out of an alleyway in order to escape Liam Neeson's nefarious Bad Cop. It's this build-and-rebuild ethos that makes the movie go — the movie twists and turns relentlessly and often without any warning, as if there's a kid above acting like King Kong and knocking down the tower he's built before starting over on something different. It's a funny, quirky, weird adventure that has fun with the limitations of Legos while making clear that there's nothing you can't do or make with those interlocking blocks. Including spaceships.

"I think what we’ve really found is that Lego is a medium," Michael McNally, Lego's brand relations director, tells me. "It’s not a toy, it’s a medium for other people to tell their own stories and create their own adventures." To tell theirs, Lord and Miller (who wrote and directed 21 Jump Street and the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs series) turned to Animal Logic, a well-known Australian effects studio. The result is stunning, a mix of stop-motion and photorealism that left me constantly forgetting and remembering the characters are Lego minifigures with claws for hands and as many personalities as they have outfits.

The world of The Lego Movie is enormous and meticulously detailed , and McNally notes that you could pause the movie at any point and build everything you see. (Lego’s own designers helped Animal Logic with the set and character design.) The film still feels very much like Lord and Miller, though, a constant string of winking references and off-topic pop culture jokes to go with crazy sight gags and physical humor. The cast may be needlessly star-studded — Channing Tatum’s Superman has all of about three lines — but it’s hard to imagine a lesser group pulling off this mix of irreverent and sincere. Will Arnett might be my favorite Batman ever.

It's a movie made for Lego fans of all ages, which McNally reminds me are everywhere: Lego is the second-largest toy maker in the world, and there are even communities of Adult Fans of Lego (AFOL) around the world. "It’s no different from Volkswagen owners or Apple enthusiasts or Disney fanatics," he says. "We have Lego fans." He grants that the movie seems designed to encourage and revive interest in Lego (and to sell bricks), but says that wasn't the point. "A feature film was never really something we set out to make. A lot of people say, ‘Well, toy movies are just designed to sell toys.’ And that’s not something that was compelling to us… it wasn’t like we needed a movie to help us sell more stuff."

Only a cast this good could pull off this movie

It took more than two years for Warner Bros. to convince McNally and Lego to allow the movie, and more than four more to make it. "We didn’t have urgency around it," McNally says. "And I think that was maybe not such a bad thing for either party, because it made us all want to work harder to make sure it was the right film." He says there’s no immediate plan to work on a sequel, though Warner Bros. might have other ideas .

The Lego Movie is one of my favorite animated movies in years, and it left me wondering about that big blue bucket of interlocking squares that’s still in my parents’ house. Suddenly I want to build something.

Film Review: ‘The Lego Movie’

This all-ages geekstravaganza upholds and expands love for the Lego brand while irreverently skewering consumer culture at large.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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The typical Lego minifigure stands just 4cm tall, though of course, the popular construction toys hold a much bigger place than that in children’s imaginations. “ The Lego Movie ” understands how fans interact with the brand and answers with a mile-a-minute geekstravaganza that immerses kids — and the adults who only think they outgrew their old playsets — at ground level with the tiny plastic bricks. Just as they did with “21 Jump Street” and “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” before this most ambitious undertaking, co-helmers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller irreverently deconstruct the state of the modern blockbuster and deliver a smarter, more satisfying experience in its place, emerging with a fresh franchise for others to build upon.

To the enormous credit of these preternaturally clever writer-directors, the above paragraph contains more low-hanging Lego puns than the movie itself, which relies on ingenuity and genuinely inspired twists on what audiences expect from such an experience to deliver a constant stream of engagement and laughs.

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Once exclusively the domain of Saturday morning cartoons, where they functioned as feature-length commercials for the brands in question, toy-based entertainments now lead the box office, and an assignment like this — which will massively affect the bottom line of the product in question — could have gone any number of ways. On one hand, “Toy Story” had long since cornered the sincere ode-to-childhood-playthings approach, while the “Transformers” and “G.I. Joe” movies went the overkill route, all but obliterating the notion that those bombastic adventures could in any way relate to how kids use the related toy products, and treating them more like the afterthought tie-ins “Star Wars” and other films typically support.

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But “The Lego Movie” demonstrates something altogether different. The film functions as a massive homage to a shared childhood experience, amplified and projected on the bigscreen. So, while the result is undoubtedly the single most product-centric film of all time, it’s also just hip and irreverent enough to leave audiences feeling as though its makers managed to pull one over on the business guys. They’ve gotten away with something, upholding and expanding the worldwide Cult of Lego — the plot literally serves to cement the right and wrong way to play with the product — while good-naturedly skewering consumer culture at large.

The experience opens with a bombastic, but not-entirely-serious confrontation between a power-hungry Lego figure named Lord Business (Will Ferrell, back in evil-with-a-wink “Megamind” mode) and good wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman, poking fun at every voice-of-authority figure he’s ever played) for a force that gives whoever possesses it control of the entire Lego universe. This powerful entity is trumped only by the “Man Upstairs.”

And so the Lego people live in a state of primitive superstition, torn between their ambitious new leader — who reinvents himself as President Business, issuing an elaborate system of “instructions” that keep his citizens tightly confined to their respective realms — and the mysterious godlike entity whose hand can reach down at any time to rearrange everything according to his own design. As anyone who has played with Legos knows, a strict adherence to the rules makes for relatively mindless play, whereas things can really get fun when one dumps all the bricks onto the bedroom floor and starts freestyling creations from scratch, even if that means blending pieces from pirate, castle, space and city sets (which is precisely the sort of disorder President Business aims to quash).

According to an ancient prophecy repeated by Vitruvius, one day a “Special” will arise to dismantle the rigid conformity that governs the Lego universe — a concept that echoes Warners’ own “The Matrix,” albeit with none of that film’s self-seriousness of tone. Where Trinity did the honors in that film, a sexy goth chick who calls herself Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) inadvertently introduces Emmet (“Parks and Recreation’s” Chris Pratt), an endearingly empty-headed construction worker, to the notion that certain Master Builders have the power to recombine available pieces into anything they can imagine.

This encounter has profound existential implications for Emmet, who had previously been content to follow the rules: buying expensive coffee, watching braindead TV and singing along with an insidiously catchy anthem called “Everything Is Awesome” that keeps the citizens of Bricksburg working, building and buying in lockstep. Now, with his little yellow mind blown, Emmet is pulled into a renegade adventure to help Wyldstyle thwart President Business’ plans to cement his neatly ordered Lego world in place with a substance called Kragle (actually, Krazy Glue, with a few of the letters rubbed off its tube).

With “Robot Chicken’s” Chris McKay in charge of animation and editing (with co-editor David Burrows), the pic clips along with quick, cut-to-the-gag abandon. And much like last year’s “Wreck-It Ralph” (or the more tonally similar “Adventure Time”), “The Lego Movie” anticipates a certain attention-deficit quality in its audience, constantly plunging the action into new and different realms, while poking fun at the various characters and customs that make each sort of silly along the way.

From the outset, Lord and Miller decide to respect the idea of Lego while reserving the right to poke fun at anything and everything the brand encompasses, including (nearly) all the other creative properties that have licensed themselves to Lego in recent years — at least, all those that fall within the expansive Warners universe, plus some of the sillier one-offs (including mermaids and clowns and so on). That means DC superheroes can exist alongside the NBA All-Stars (Shaquille O’Neal even lends his own voice), and the Harry Potter wizards have a chance to bicker with those from “The Lord of the Rings.”

More importantly, given the film’s flip approach, it means that no one is being so protective of the way that, say, Batman (Will Arnett) or the “Star Wars” characters are presented that a team of lawyers was allowed to swoop in and spoil the fun. Instead, everything is subject to the director’s silly-making sensibility, especially the plot itself, which may as well have been borrowed from every other brink-of-disaster epic. So, while Emmet and his minifigure friends go about trying to save the day, the film takes a step back to reveal the live-action world in which their tiny travails are situated, earning not just laughs, but a measure of genuine sentiment in the process.

Lego fans have been making their own Lego movies for years, to the extent that the company even introduced a “Lego Studios” line in the year 2000 that included a Steven Spielberg-lookalike director and a working stop-motion camera. In choosing the look of their big-budget production, Lord and Miller stick to that aesthetic, using computer animation to simulate the surface texture and slightly jerky movement we might expect if someone had orchestrated the entire experience with  plastic toys painstakingly repositioned and photographed one frame at a time (according to the press notes, that would have taken no fewer than 15,080,330 bricks).

Such things may not seem important to the casual observer, but the creative team had to make important decisions about how the characters move and behave, committing to a look that mirrors how the plastic pieces appear in real life: They can be taken apart and reconfigured, but they don’t bend (the way they do in Lego videogames). At the end of the day, everything remains molded plastic, complete with visible nicks and scratches. The tiny faces appear “painted” on, but are also interchangeable, which supports Liam Neeson’s hilariously conflicted police officer (whose head rotates to reveal both Bad Cop and Good Cop personalities) and a wide range of crazy, caricatured expressions for everyone else.

As in Lord and Miller’s two previous pics, the directors allow things to swell bigger than the assignment requires, and the story gets away from them a bit in its final third. The difference here, however, is that they’ve built in a separate level on which to watch the entire experience, inviting audiences to enjoy the creativity of the construction itself — which is something the film shares with any child who’s ever invented an unintended use for an existing Lego piece. They have fun representing elements such as fire and water with repurposed plastic, or introducing “relics” (such as Band-Aids and housekeys that somehow got mixed up with the Legos) into the characters’ midst. The wildly creative result — lively and ultimately more than a little overwhelming — embodies precisely what is meant when something amounts to more than the sum of its parts.

Reviewed at AMC Century City 15, Los Angeles, Feb. 1, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 110 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. release and presentation in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, in association with Lego System A/S, of a Vertigo Enteratinment, Lin Pictures production. Produced by Dan Lin, Roy Lee. Executive producers, Jill Wilfert, Matthew Ashton, Kathleen Fleming, Allison Abbate, Zareh Nalbandian, Jon Burton, Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Seanne Winslow, James Packer, Steven Mnuchin, Matt Skiena, Bruce Berman. Co-producer, John Powers Middleton.
• Crew: Directed, written by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller; story, Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman. Camera (color, widescreen, HD, 3D), Pablo Plaisted; live action camera, Barry Peterson; editors, David Burrows, Chris McKay; music, Mark Mothersbaugh; production designer, Gran Freckelton; live action art directors, Jay Pelissier, Sue Chan; live action set decorator, Danielle Berman; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat), Brannon Brown; supervising sound editor/designer, Wayne Pashley; re-recording mixers, Phil Heywood, Pashley, Greg Fitzgerald; animation supervisor, McKay; feature animation, Animal Logic; head of animation, Rob Coleman; FX supervisor, Carsten Kolve; special effects supervisor, Jimmy Lorimer; 3D conversion, Legend 3D; associate producers, Amber Naismith, Will Allegra; assistant director, Steve Day; casting, Mary Hidalgo.
• With: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman.

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• DVD & Streaming

The LEGO Movie

• Action/Adventure , Animation , Comedy , Kids , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• February 7, 2014
• Voices of Chris Pratt as Emmet; Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius; Will Ferrell as President Business and The Man Upstairs; Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle/Lucy; Will Arnett as Batman; Liam Neeson as Bad Cop/Good Cop

Home Release Date

• June 17, 2014
• Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Distributor

• Warner Bros.

Movie Review

Emmet is an average nobody. I mean, we all have something that makes us someone, but Emmet doesn’t really even have that. On the other hand, he’s a very nice, very positive, very devoted average nobody with nothing. His favorite song is “Everything Is Awesome.” It’s a catchy tune he could listen to all day, and usually does. When he goes to work at his average construction job, building average skyscrapers for his big boss, President Business, why, Emmet can’t help but smile ear to blocky ear.

Then one day something happens that changes all that.

Emmet runs back to the construction site after work to grab his prized instruction manual he left behind and spots this beautiful girl digging through the debris. She’s the most un -average girl he’s ever seen. So much so that his jaw would have hit the floor if a painted-on jaw could do such a thing.

Then, after he slips and takes a series of accidental tumbles—something pretty average for Emmet—the splendid girl mistakes him for “the most important person in the universe.” (Otherwise known as the Special.) Emmet hasn’t got a clue what that even means, but if she wants to talk to him about it, then that’s super stupendous. Besides, maybe she can tell him what this big piece of something or other is that’s stuck to his back. 

The girl’s name, by the way, is Wyldstyle. How’s that for unique? And she’s a master builder who’s able to snap together just about any blocky thing she can dream up. (Sigh. And wow! )

Wyldstyle takes Emmet to meet a wizard-like guy with a long white beard named Vitruvius. And he seems to think Emmet is this prophesized Special too. They also tell him this incredible story about President Business and an ancient relic called a Kragle and the coming of the end of the world … in three days! It all seems so far-fetched and unbelievable and out of the ordinary.

But Emmet’s not going to complain or worry or even doubt any of it. For the first time in his very square life there are people who think he might be more than mediocre. And they just happen to be the most cool, smart and incredibly AWESOME people he’s ever met! If they want him to be Special, then he’ll work to make that true.

He just has to piece it all together.

[ Connecting studs and plot spoilers are both contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

You’ve figured out by now that Emmet is a perfectly ordinary guy who is pretty unexceptional in every way. (We find out that the people he works with hardly know him and in many cases can’t even remember his name.) But when he gets singled out to be Special, he steps up in a big way. “When you told me I was important and special, that was the first time anybody had ever told me that,” Emmet says to Wyldstyle, whose real name, we find out, is Lucy. “And I wanted to do everything I could to live up to that.” He goes so far as to even be willing to sacrifice his life to save those around him.

That “embrace what is special about you” attitude permeates the movie and is repeated over and over. Emmet’s choices eventually motivate the master builders (a group of individually talented block builders) to work together as a team, sacrifice for one another and stand up to fight what they consider to be an all-powerful evil. There’s even a nice thread in here about the value of following instructions. Get along. Work together. Follow instructions! Those are very nice messages indeed.

And now we get to our first blocky spoiler : In the real world, you see, a young boy with a rich imagination is the creative force behind the whole adventure we’re watching. And though his dad isn’t initially too happy with him, the man eventually embraces the boy and admits that playing imaginatively—and together —is far more enjoyable than working alone on his grand LEGO hobby set.

Spiritual Elements

There are a number of “relics” imbued with special power that are revered in this fantastical world of plastic people. But once we get a closer look at them, we realize that they’re actually discarded items from the real world of human people, such as a tube of Krazy Glue, a Band-Aid and a Q-tip. One of those relics—a special item that the wise man Vitruvius prophesizes about—is a cap to the aforementioned tube of glue. And Emmet receives a quick “vision” when he first touches it. He sees the image of someone Vitruvius defines as the “Man Upstairs.” Then, in the course of things, Vitruvius is killed and returns as a plastic ghost held aloft by a string.

We eventually learn that the entire world of blocks and studs, and all its “magical” happenings are part of the human boy’s imagination. It’s a story he concocts as he snaps together the plastic bricks in his basement. And the Man Upstairs is actually his dad, who warned him not to play with the elaborate cityscape he’s constructed out of his prized LEGOs.

Sexual & romantic Content

There’s an obvious attraction developing between Emmet and Lucy that culminates with them … holding hands. (She’s been dating Batman up till this point.) Somebody makes a comment about Wyldstyle having a “heavenly body.”

Violent Content

If the blow-’em-up action and wham-bam fight scenes of this pic were part of a live-action movie, they would demand several paragraphs detailing the damage in a Plugged In review. There is a constant stream here of everything from fast-moving traffic smash-ups, to bombastic fist- and gunfights, to horsemen riding off a high cliff and erupting in a nuclear explosion, to a whole cloud-based fantasy land being blown up and destroyed.

The difference here, of course, is that this is an animated world populated by plastic blocks. Even the rapid-fire projectiles and an explosion’s resulting flames are all made of colorful plastic—just as they are when kids around the globe play with LEGOs on their bedroom carpet. Characters, buildings and vehicles bash, crash and fall apart into their primal pieces, and so nothing feels deadly or particularly permanent. A tube of Krazy Glue becomes the ultimate deadly weapon because it can freeze the LEGO folks in place, effectively rendering them lifeless. (We see numerous examples of this.) A laser ray is used to melt plastic and almost zaps Emmet before it’s stopped. Indeed, “melting” is threatened as a torture technique. A head is lopped off a “man’s” neck.

Crude or Profane Language

“Darn,” “dang it,” “butt” and “oh my gosh” are all repeated a few times each. We hear exclamations of “what the heck?” Name-calling includes “butt,” “dorky” and “ding-dong.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

A group of guys talk about meeting up at a “sports bar” after work (but they say it’s the chicken wings that prime the pump for getting “crazy,” not alcohol).

Other noteworthy Elements

There are silly lowball gags thrown into the comedy mix. A pair of robots, for example, jump up on a copy machine to make photocopies of their plastic block backsides. Similarly, a running gag revolves around a favorite TV show called “Where Are My Pants?” So we sometimes see “naked” LEGOs, all yellow and “bare” instead of painted with “clothes.” When someone states that a proposed plan will be “really hard,” a pirate-robot scoffs at the statement saying, “Wiping ye bum with a hook for a hand be really hard .”

Picture dumping a box full of LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, old action figures, cast off toy cars and plastic thingamajigs on the rug. (Something I was very fond of doing as a tyke, much to the chagrin of my mother who never seemed to find the joy in it.) Then think of staging all those playthings in a wacky action adventure of your own boundless youthful imagining.

That pretty much sums up The LEGO Movie experience. (If, that is, you were also very good at coming up with giggle-a-minute quips and had some talented movie star pals who could voice the whole thing with grown-up glee.) It’s a bright, silly and breakneck-paced good-guy-vs.-bad-guy tale that offers kids and kids at heart some pretty big lessons for such a small-scale story:

1) Believe in yourself. You can never know how much you can really do—how special you really are—unless you give it a good try.

2) Let your imagination lift you up to creative rapture. There’s nothing more fun or fulfilling than that.

3) Work together to get the job done right. After all, a bunch of geniuses all going in opposite directions can’t accomplish anywhere near what a gaggle of workaday guys and gals can if they cooperate and push forward down the same path.

4) Follow instructions. You just never know what kind of cool result you might get!

For those who have played any of the LEGO video games, the transition to the big screen will feel very familiar. The film does, however, pack in more “dangs” and “darns” and “what the hecks” than you’ll find while gripping a game console. And the story is actually more high-action than the games, too—which equates to lots and lots of chases, explosions and rapid-fire plastic bullet shootouts between heroes and villains.

Still, like the games—and my blocks on the rug—all that thumping and bumping comes off as a playful part of a kid’s overactive fantasies. Even a chap losing his head and reappearing as a glow-in-the-dark toy ghost feels inconsequential thanks to the movie’s connect-a-block-and-break-everything-into-pieces goofiness.

You could say that it’s all just the longest and most entertaining LEGO commercial you’ve ever seen. But I’m actually quite fond of the idea it offers to parents and kids alike: That using your imagination is a grand thing, and using your imagination together is even better.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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The Lego Movie : EW review

Animators work with more freedom than other filmmakers — theoretically, they can visualize anything — but let’s be honest: In the past few years, there has been such a glut of big-studio digital-cartoon features made in a conventionally pleasing, market-tested style that animation, in effect, has stopped surprising us. Frozen , much as I liked it, was jammed with overly familiar princess/sidekick/journey-of-redemption tropes. And it’s hard to think of the last time a Pixar film made you go ”Wow!” That’s part of why The LEGO Movie is such outrageous and intoxicating fun. It may be a helter-skelter kiddie adventure built out of plastic toy components, but it’s fast and original, it’s conceptually audacious, it’s visually astonishing, and it’s 10 times more clever and smart and funny than it needed to be. Here, at last, is an animated comedy that never stops surprising you.

It’s also startlingly sophisticated. The directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, have forged The LEGO Movie almost entirely out of digital imagery, but they replicate the primitive, eye-popping high of stop-motion animation, creating a LEGO universe as if it had been built piece by piece. Like Toy Story 19 years ago, the film fools your eye into thinking it’s watching real plastic that moves, and the connection to the Toy Story films doesn’t end there. The LEGO Movie , likewise, invents a kind of child-friendly meta universe in which the playthings on display are at once objects and characters. The transparently fake LEGO constructions embody the pure spirit of make-believe.

Emmet Brickowski (voiced by Chris Pratt) is an ordinary-Joe construction worker, a LEGO Minifigure with a peg for a head. Each day, along with his Bricksburg neighbors, he chews over last night’s episode of a sitcom called Where Are My Pants? , gets rooked for designer coffee at 37 bucks a pop, and bops along to the feel-good robotized disco anthem ”Everything Is Awesome.” The LEGO Movie skewers a fascist entertainment state in which corporations now dictate every momentary pleasure. Using the building-block world of LEGO to parody the creeping conformity of our world, The LEGO Movie proves even more biting than WALL-E , because it has the sauciness to send up its own rise-of-a-hero story line. Presenting, with poker-faced mockery, a white-haired wizard named Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) and a natteringly contentious group of superheroes from Batman (Will Arnett) to Green Lantern (Jonah Hill) to Abraham Lincoln (Orville Forte), the film wittily satirizes the overblown solemnity of fantasy franchise filmmaking.

You’d expect the hero to be a nonconformist, but Emmet, who has all the personality of a PEZ dispenser, really isn’t special. That’s part of the movie’s subversive cheekiness. Lured by a sexy LEGO Minifigure named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), he falls in with a group of outcasts who think he’s the Master Builder — i.e., the One who can overthrow President Business (Will Ferrell), the CEO of the nation who is also Lord Business, a Vader-like despot. The film’s comedy is very digressive, very free-associational (think Team America meets Family Guy ). And though near the end The LEGO Movie takes a leap into outside-the-frame storytelling that may not have been necessary, that leap still neatly channels the film’s theme: If you build it, life will be awesome. A

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Netflix's 2024 Comedy With 30% Rotten Tomatoes Score Becomes Global Hit

Denzel washington & russell crowe's acclaimed gangster movie is coming to netflix this september, first beetlejuice beetlejuice reviews are in — is tim burton's sequel worth the 36-year wait, the lego movie is a fun adventure with heart and originality that everyone (regardless of age) should experience in full, big-screen 3d grandeur..

The LEGO Movie   takes place in an actual living LEGO world, where the maniacal Lord Business (Will Ferrell) masquerades as "President Business," keeping the population complacent and oblivious with a drone-like existence built on generic pop-songs and rigid manuals for team-based LEGO construction. The old and wise Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) tells of a prophecy where a Master Builder (one skilled in the art of LEGO construction) will appear from the masses to thwart Lord Business's master weapon, "The Kragle" - but no one in the world expected that man to be Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt).

See, Emmet is about as complacent and oblivious as they come in LEGO land - unremarkable in just about every way. But when he finds the mythical artifact that can finally stop The Kragle, Emmet instantly becomes the most important man in the world; although, he'd settle for the affections of warrior Master Builder, Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks). With help from the likes of Batman (Will Arnett) and other Master Builders, Emmet embarks on an adventure to save LEGO land - before the Master Builders discover that their prophesied hero isn't what they think he is.

Toys and board games have been the inspiration for more than a few movies, but the results of adapting children's playthings into blockbuster movies with mass appeal can be a real hit ( Transformers  ) or miss ( Battleship ) proposition. A movie based on LEGO building blocks seems like a far-fetched premise for a feature film - but thanks to the imaginative powers and heart of directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord ( Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs ,  21 Jump Street )  The LEGO Movie  is one of the most clever, original and fun adaptations of a toy or game ever put to screen.

Right from the start, the angle of attack is perfect; LEGO land (as imagined in this film) is an interesting and smart application of the LEGO toy experience, and the directors seem to really know the product well, which allows them to provide great comedic insight about how an actual world of LEGO people would move, function, and reflect our own daily rat-race. The colors are bright, the production design is thoroughly impressive, and the animation style (a mix of stop-motion and CGI) is no less than revolutionary when it comes to creating the ("LEGO-ness?") of the characters' movements and the physics of their world.

The film literally looks like a LEGO set has come to life onscreen - and in this case, 3D viewing is a MUST. The directors use the three-dimensional format in exactly the right manner: an immersive design that pulls you into the visuals while adding the proper "diorama effect" that makes the LEGO figurines and sets feel like the real objects, rather than animated interpretations of the them. In short: If you want the full "living LEGO" experience, you need to pay premium price - but it's worth it. Each shot is stuffed with so much visual information, Easter eggs, and hidden gags that repeat viewings will be well worth your while, as well.

The only real downside to the directorial approach is that when some of the film's bigger action sequences take place, the visuals can get a bit complicated to follow, and the animation style can get a bit choppy and break suspension of disbelief. For example: when lasers are flying and six to eight characters are all pulling off combat/building maneuvers against a horde of enemies, it can start to look like you're watching someone's impressive stop-motion project, rather than a blockbuster animated feature. But that deficiency is a small one, and admittedly comes with the territory.

The script for the film was also written by Lord and Miller - with story help from Kevin and Dan Hageman ( Ninjago ,  Hotel Transylvania ) - and it is equally as good as the direction, offering a multi-layered narrative with humor, wit, meta-minded irony and heart, which will appeal to kids and adults alike. The initial character/thematic arc is lifted straight from  The Matrix - or pretty much every other "unlikely hero" archetype - but Lord and Miller manage to fit at least two other levels of meaning into the proceedings. While kids are invested in a hero quest, adults will pick up on sly-but-subtle metaphors (corporate uniformity vs. creative freedom, etc.) - and by the third act, when things take an especially clever turn, both kids AND adults can bond over the sort of themes expressed when  The LEGO Movie  really opens it heart and gets real.

The dialogue, banter, and winking ode to certain iconic characters (like Batman) make the film a highly enjoyable ride, but it is the injection of real-world emotion and some potentially heavy (but deftly handled) dramatic ideas that elevate this film above thin and saccharine second-tier animated features. Lord and Miller are not afraid to push the boundary a bit, including certain sequences that could've been too much for kids, but are delivered in just the right way to avoid frightening or offending young minds, resulting in some great comedy and drama at different junctures.

The voice cast is also pretty spectacular, and function as a great comedic ensemble in addition to breathing livelihood and personality into their respective characters (not surprising, really, since most of the cast are drawn from a pool of actors who have populated cult-hit sitcoms in the last five years). Chris Pratt ( Parks and Rec ) and Elizabeth Banks ( 30 Rock ) are pitch-perfect (pun) as Emmet and Wyldstyle. Pratt in particular seems poised for his leading man breakout this year (Marvel's  Guardians of the Galaxy  is waiting on deck) and deservedly so, judging from his work here. Will Ferrell pulls out his  Megamind persona to create a fun villain (his mispronunciation gags still work, surprisingly enough)  - but he's outclassed by Liam Neeson, who goes for broke voicing the bi-polar henchman, Good Cop/Bad Cop. 

Supporting characters in the Master Builder clan include Will Arnett ( 30 Rock ), doing a fantastic Batman riff; Alison Brie playing up her  Community  persona as an emotionally fragile "Unikitty"; Nick Offerman ( Parks and Rec ) as a hardcore pirate, and  It's Always Sunny  star Charlie Day as an overly-enthusiastic astronaut. From there it's just a gold rush of voice-cameo goodness, including  Jump Street  stars Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill poking fun at themselves, while everyone from Cobie Smulders to Keegan-Michael Key, Chris McKay, Dave Franco and others show up for a wink and a laugh. There are also some cameos from iconic celebrities that are just too deliciously great to spoil here; keep your ears open, is all I'll say.

___________________________________________________

ALSO: The Complete  LEGO Movie  Character Guide

In the end, The LEGO Movie is a fun adventure with heart and originality that everyone (regardless of age) should experience in full, big-screen 3D grandeur. It's another home run effort from Lord and Miller, who, like their blocky protagonist, may look like the most unlikely of cinematic geniuses, but whose unique imaginations may just hold the key to saving us from generic and formulaic movies.

When it comes to  The LEGO Movie , "everything is awesome," indeed.

[poll id="759"]

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The Lego Movie

The first film in the Lego movie franchise, 2014's The Lego Movie tells the story of Emmett Brickowski (Chris Pratt), an average construction worker from the Lego city of Bricksburg. After finding the fabled "Piece of Resistance", Emmett finds himself opposing the plans of the villainous Lord Business (Will Ferrell) with the help of both original characters and licensed ones such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.  

• Movie Reviews
• 4.5 star movies

The Lego Movie

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Animated movies in 3-D are box-office bonanzas, and The Lego Movie is no exception. George Clooney’s Monuments Men should prepare to be shot down. The brightly-imagined Lego Movie is also a wickedly smart and funny free-for-all, and sassy enough to shoot well-aimed darts at corporate branding. Satirical subversion in family entertainment is an unexpected treat, especially in a movie that also functions as a triumph of product placement. For plot, we get Chris Pratt voicing a block of plastic called Emmet Brickowski, a construction worker who follows the rules until he’s enlisted to rebel against President Business (Will Ferrell) to take down the forces against spontaneity so we can all create our own universe, preferably with Legos. Or something like that. The movie, designed with flair to spare by Chris Miller and Philip Lord, the creators of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs , has so much energy it sometimes spins out of control. But the fun is nonstop. The movie’s irresistible theme song, by Tegan and Sara, is “Everything Is Awesome.” In this movie, everything really is.

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The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

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Rent The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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While it isn't quite as much fun as its predecessor, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part fits neatly into an animated all-ages franchise with heart and humor to spare.

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The lego movie.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 102 Reviews
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Based on 262 kid reviews

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This title has:

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Y'all are overreacting..

• Too much consumerism

The LEGO MOVIE is not something that will disappoint you

My legos came to life, and i came to my legos.

after I watched this movie, I was convinced that my legos were sentient beings. I wanted to test this. I took batman, the lion from chima, zane, and mace windu, and I sent them through the toilet paper roll portal. to my surprise, they fell through the hole in my pants, as I desperately scrambled to get them out, I felt movement. “That must be the kragle!” creamed Zane. before I knew what was going on, they begin masterbuilding. fast and hard, I couldn’t even fathom what was going on in those creative heads of theirs. “oh no! the kragle’s getting bigger!” exclaimed the lion from chima. “it- it’s gonna blow!” yelled mace. I busted one giant stud, and that was it for them. I pulled their trapped selves out. “w-who are you?” exclaimed the lion from chima. I grinned. “jizzness, lord jizzness.” I’d never felt such a power trip before. I began to bust studs over every lego set I owned, kragling ninjago, nexo knights, friends, duplo. nobody was safe from me and my kragle. “it doesn’t have to be this way” exclaimed lego lebron. he was right, I had done too much, even my sisters mega blocks had fallen victim. it was time to seal the kragle forever, and with the piece of resistance (harry potter azkaban chastity cage) the reign of lord jizzness was no more.

THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME (like the song)

Pretty dang good, great movie for all ages.

• Educational value

THE LEGO MOVIE - ONE OF HOLLYWOOD'S MOST INSPIRING FILM EVER MADE!

Funny, entertaining, good morals, character design/growth, plot is solid, and appropriate., still funny, cute, action-packed and incredibly nostalgic., what to watch next.

The Lego Batman Movie

The Lego Ninjago Movie

LEGO Batman: The Movie -- DC Superheroes Unite

LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers

Lego video games, best superhero movies for kids, related topics.

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