Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo that brought the animated world crashing to a halt with meatballs and pancakes in “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” return with “The Lego Movie;” a dryly titled, seemingly unassuming film that underestimates its wildly rambunctious and clever content.
The film opens as Lord Business (Will Ferrell, “The Other Guys”) steals the piece of resistance (a glue cap), which has the power to foil his plans to use “the kragle,” or super glue with a few letters scratched off the packet, from Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman, “Last Vegas”) the all powerful god figure. After defeating Vitruvius and stealing “the Kragle,” Lord Business becomes President Business who manages to build a city in the image of a garishly furnished Orwellian metropolis.
Enter Emmet Brickowski (Chris Pratt, “Guardians of the Galaxy”), a regular run-of-the-mill construction worker ambling about his day and following a much detailed instruction plan, when Wyldestyle (Elizabeth Banks, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”) manages to rock the foundation of Brickowski’s life. Emmet stumbles upon the masterpiece buried deep under the city, this glue cap then becomes attached to his back out of a series of clumsy circumstances. Soon he’s drafted into a wild adventure where he must confront an army of robocops, cowboys and dragons chasing him for the piece.
If the plot sounds outrageously rote and cliched, it’s meant in part to be that way. The most clever, inventive trait of Lord and Miller’s production is not just the exquisitely rendered worlds that Emmet, Batman (Will Arnett, “The Nut Job”) and friends fly through with an untrammeled stop-motion grace, or the equally beguiling, zippy cinematography by the aptly named Pablo Plaisted (“The Golden Compass”), but the ability for the film to lampoon large aspects of consumerist culture and commonplace film platitudes.
“The Lego Movie” skewers “The Matrix” in the Trinity grafted character of Wyldestyle, which the writers of the film do recognize is a ridiculous name fit for a DJ. The film deconstructs (ironically, or not) cop cliches with Liam Neeson (“Taken”) voicing a hilariously bipolar swivel headed character named Bad Cop and acknowledges the Morgan Freeman’s contractual obligation to play every character called God for the rest of his life.
For a movie that could have easily been a low hanging fruit for banal product placement, Miller and Lord have made a very gorgeous, loving little film with a big heart that allows Lego lovers to share their enthusiasm for the boundless possibilities of imagination that Lego blocks inspires.
For adults, take the kids. Heck, take other adults. No assembly is required for “The Lego Movie.” Everything is awesome, indeed, as the catchy house song sung by Tegan and Sara blares throughout, and it just might even be better than that.
