The Lego Movie

ITS WRENCH TIME?!

"The story of a nobody who saved everybody."

Hello friends and felons, it's Thursday and that means that you're all one day away from a weekend of drunken debauchery maybe, or maybe you don't do that. Also maybe you work in the service industry, and so your toil will end only in death. I can relate. You know who else can relate, and meets their bitter fate with exuberance? The Lego workers in The Lego Movie. After all, I have it on good authority that everything is awesome, and everything is cool when you're part of a team (that song has been stuck in my head since I watched the movie and I realize now that I will have to use a power drill to get it out. A sacrifice I am willing to make to just be free from it). On that chipper note, today I will be talking about The Lego Movie, a film that I would say was unlikely to ever happen, and further than that was even less likely to somehow be good. As you might guess from the title, this film is about Legos, and Lego stuff. It stars Chris Pratt (who is having a pretty big year I guess, between this, his ongoing appearance on Parks & Rec, and his upcoming appearance in the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy film) as Emmet Brickowoski, an absolutely average Lego construction worker, living in the land of Bricksburg. Emmet is a boring loser, but one day he accidentally stumbles upon the Piece of Resistance, a thing that supposedly will save all the Lego lands from being destroyed by the ruthless Lord Business, who wants everything to be neat and orderly, and so plans to glue everyone in place. Emmet is found by super cool ninja lady/maybe some kind of DJ Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks, also not doing bad for herself this year), and together they set off to find the wise wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) so they can try and stop Lord Business.

Meet Unikitty, and Wyldstyle, and Vitruvius. Benny?

This journey takes them through various other themed Lego realms, including one up in the clouds that is home to Unikitty, which is a unicorn and cat that is always happy, so that was a thing. Joining Emmet and not-a-dj Wyldstyle are a variety of other Lego folk, including Batman (who is voiced by Will Arnett and it is really funny) a giant mechanized pirate named Metalbeard (voiced by Nick Offerman and I honestly never would have figured that out if I hadn't looked it up) and a 1980sish space man named Benny (voiced by Charlie Day) who is obsessed with getting to build spaceships, because he is a space man obviously (I especially enjoyed Benny, with his rubbed off logo on his shirt and cracked helmet, he looks exactly like a Lego spaceman I had when I was little, which was obviously the point). This cast highlights one of the very smart moves the creators of this movie made when they were conceiving it, which is taking advantage of the wide range of Lego characters and kits that exist. While it's fun to build a thing by the directions, anyone who has spent a lot of time with Legos knows that the most fun is had when you start mashing kits together, and this movie does a good job of simulating that sort of ridiculous mashup, while at the same time utilizing a lot of really funny people to great effect.

Taco Tuesday is a euphemism for the end times.

Speaking of great effect, the way that this movie was animated is really neat, and their devotion to the style of real Legos was really worth it in the end. Rather than let the movie look animated, the movie animators tried to make everything look as much like Lego bricks as possible, and used Lego brick shapes for virtually all of the effects, including smoke plumes, water, and the lasers that the robots shoot. I actually kind of thought that the movie was shot using actual Legos at some point, but apparently it was all digital effects that were just designed to look as much like actual Legos bouncing around as possible. It's a charming effect (zoomlines behind Benny the spaceman at one point are even made to look like Lego bricks), and I think it really helps to capture the feel that the movie was going for, of the sort of adventures a kid would imagine their Lego guys and gals having. The movie is animated fantastically in general, and I'm sure children will enjoy the vibrant Lego world as much as I did, because I am essentially a child.

Seems like a good life to me.

The movie is tame enough to be PG, but clever enough with its jokes to be amusing to an adult, or at least an adolescent masquerading as one (me again). In particular Will Arnett's Batman is totally ridiculous, and Liam Neeson as Bad Cop was pretty good too. The movie is full of other amusing little tidbits (for instance Channing Tatum voices Superman, and Jonah Hill is Green Lantern trying to tag along with him, 21 Jump Street style, I think that movie had the same director too) and together equals a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Also a doubledecker couch is a really stupid idea, sorry Emmet. This movie was a real surprise for me, because I just couldn't conceive of how you might make a Lego movie big budget and have it not be completely shitty, but they did it. I totally recognize that this was also an opportunity for them to make a buttload of money off of tie in Lego sets (which they did) but still, it was a very entertaining film (also lucrative in and of itself. 60 million budget translated into almost 450 million worldwide, yeowch). If you ever enjoyed Legos or just like funny movies, I recommend you check it out.

That's all for today folks! Join me again next week, For girl on girl action, maybe.