Official Australian release date:
3/4/14. Viewed: 19/4/14.
Directors:
Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Actors: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks,
Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman
Genre: Animation / Comedy / Adventure
Rating: PG
Rating: PG
‘The Lego Movie’ is exactly what you
expect, but also at the same time, something unexpected. It’s a bright,
fast-paced, well-intentioned kids’ film, but it also has quite a few genuine
laughs and touching moments – not that they’re out of place, just that they add
some levity to the story, which sometimes does get a little too “meta” for it’s
own good.
The storyline is quite straightforward
– ordinary guy gets thrust into an adventure to save the Universe, defeat the
bad guy (Ferrell) and find love, even though he’s “normal” – obviously, it
turns out everyone’s “Special”/unique, not just those that are prominent. What
makes it stand out is how they’ve taken something we all know & love – I doubt
anyone born in the last 40 years hasn’t played with Lego as a kid – and
translated it to a living world. We get to see this through Emmet (Pratt)’s
eyes and it’s pretty funny how they integrate corporate America - coffee, music & TV shows - into
this Lego world. And it’s great how the Lego looks real and only animated to
move facial effects – and the animated water is great. My favourite bit was
seeing Ben the ‘generic 80’s astronaut’ (Charlie Day) – and his enthusiasm for
building spaceships – who even had an authentic helmet crack where the chin strap
always broke! I remember building weird spaceships for him.
One of my main issues is that they’ve
gone to such great effort to animate this world, but then they fly through most
of it so quickly that you don’t actually get a chance to appreciate it all! Thanks
to being a Warner Brothers film, we get the benefit of seeing DC characters – Wonder
Woman, Superman, Green Lantern (a great sub-plot with these two!), and especially,
Batman. The casting of Will Arnett as Batman is genius – his gravelly voice
perfectly suited, as well as his comic timing. The ending – combining live
action with the animation actually works – is pretty good and wraps everything
up nicely, while also making you care for some of these characters, even if
they’re little yellow blocks!
Overall: Everything is (relatively) awesome.
Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.
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