Adam,
I should preface my review by saying upfront that The Lego Movie was my favorite cinema release from the first half of this year. Its qualifications being: it’s hilarious. It wouldn’t have to be more than that, but as you showed, there’s a lot going on beneath the surface.
The Lego Movie belongs to a small, but eclectic category of American animated films whose style and content most radically challenge the idea that animation ought to remain the province of children. In the same category with Lego, I would include titles likeThe Fantastic Mr. Fox, Rango, and Beowulf, all films that, differences in quality aside, offer the kinds of complexity and weirdness not to be found in the average animated entertainment. As a point of comparison, even the most sophisticated Pixar products resist stepping too far outside the conventions of stylistic polish and narrative linearity. Instead, films like Lego feature dense and textured worlds, strong and idiosyncratic directorial voices, intertextuality, meta-narrative, and rueful acknowledgements of the grown-up reality just outside the carefully positioned or digitally generated frame.
This isn’t to say that The Lego Movie wants to put away childish things entirely. It’s much too fun and too silly for that. But it manages to balance the grown-up and the childlike mostly with remarkable grace. A big part of the movie’s premise involves the recognition that, with every modern architecture set or life-size model of Conan O’Brien, Lego culture is increasingly geared toward adults, or adult-minded children. As the dad played by Will Ferrell explains, Lego isn’t a toy, it’s “a highly sophisticated inter-locking brick system.”
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| "The box for this one said 'Ages 8 to 14!'" "That's a suggestion. They have to put that on there." |
The Lego Movie seems to be as interested in taking something intended for kids (animation) and imbuing it with adult savvy as it is in taking something that has been co-opted by the adult world (Lego) and renewing its sense of innocence and play. Maybe that’s another reason your citing of post-modernism as an influence is so astute. One of the insights of post-modernism—that most jargon-filled, theory-laden, and therefore seemingly the most un-kid-friendly of isms—was that maybe the most innovative thing art could do was simply to recapture a childlike freedom from established ways of thinking.
The Lego Movie is partly about the inevitability of growing up and partly about the vehicles that can return us, if only temporarily and if only in spirit, to the fun of youth. One of these is, of course, nostalgia for our own youths. The Lego Movie is filled with details bound to bring a smile of recognition to any adults who remember playing with Legos however many years ago: the broken chin piece on Benny the space guy’s helmet, the various Minifigure costumes and references to different Lego series, even the smudges and scratches on the Lego figures. The other way we can get back to a carefree, childlike state of mind, the movie points out, is through the eyes of actual children. The real climax of the movie occurs, not inside the Lego world at all, but at the moment that Will Ferrell’s emotionally detached dad finally loosens up enough to appreciate his son’s creativity.
The Lego Movie still has some of the weaknesses in plotting and theme that tend to afflict all feature-length comedies. Some critics, like A.O. Scott, found that the film’s message about unleashing creativity was undermined by its adherence to narrative convention. And while I think Scott is selling Lego short—how many conventionally plotted films involve a reality-bending third-act conceit?—it’s true that the film never quite resolves the tension it establishes between creativity and order.
On the one hand, we are encouraged to see Emmet’s reflexive trust of structures, systems, and routines as inherently suspect—at best only thinly masking his actual loneliness and desire for acceptance, and at worst enabling the nefarious schemes of President Business. On the other hand, the movie also points out that defining creativity as necessarily disordered and individualistic is itself a kind of uncreativeness (see: Batman’s pathological inability to conceptualize building anything not bat-themed).
"Great idea. A Bat spaceship."
It feels a bit like an inconsistency, then, that the Big Heroic Climax involves reaffirming the supreme importance of imagination, rather than seeking out a balance between imagination and organization. (This is where I should probably note that you yourself belong to the Follow the Instructions school of Lego building, whereas I go the stick-motley-pieces-together route—both approaches have their upsides.)
I want to reemphasize the point that, despite my quibbles, I do think this is a really, really good film. What The Lego Movie excels at above all is being funny, and that is by no means a small feat. Just consider the number of lame slapstick gags, tepid one-liners, and ever more outrageous scenarios America has to endure per annum, and The Lego Movie looks like even more of a gem.
I also want to single out Morgan Freeman, whose Vitruvius manages to be both the quintessential Morgan Freeman performance and the quintessential take-off of a Morgan Freeman performance. Everyone in the cast, really, shows an energy, commitment, and deftness not always present in the voice acting for animated features (usually the rule is: the bigger and more star-studded the cast, the more indifferent the individual performances). I also think I could, if I wanted to, spend pages and pages expositing on why I get so much joy out of hearing Batman refer to the Millennium Falcon crew as “bon vivants.” But for the sake of everyone, I’ll refrain. Instead, I leave you with everyone's jam:
Love,
Victoria
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