The Lego Movie

Saw The Lego Movie ( thanks, Chris!) It was an animated film about the story-less, character-less raw building material toy Legos. So any film about this stuff has to first deal with the the medium. It can't be entirely about the animation medium but it has to focus on the fact that, hey, these are Legos! The film introduces a non-entity lego-person initially who lives in a harsh, authoritarian society ruled over by the evil Lord/President Business. Incessant techno pop plays over the radio, declaring everything to be awesome, especially when you work as a team!!

I was puzzled because it's a very brave and strange choice to make the anthem of the film be the oppressive propaganda of a police-state. Later on the protagonist is criticized for being boring and uncreative but lo, his non-creativity saves the day in the end. So what's this film saying? Fortunately the film is rescued from this seeming conformity-celebration by a last-act reveal which shows that the film was actually criticizing the elitism of the other characters. That the protagonist is not a robot, just unused to self expression, to be nurtured more than criticized. In the end, he and his friends save the day, truly a part of a team of individual voices and expressions! So, kudos on the nice little message. You had me going there for a second, movie.

The film was written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller who have also produced many lesser-known gems. They created the surprisingly hilarious Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the lesser-known but also hilarious Clone High. It's great to see them getting the breakout success they deserve. Their humor is mostly absurdist and rambling, characters talking themselves into strange places and delighting in bad acronyms ("TAKOS! The S is silent!") Their skills as writers come through here as well, deftly defying expectations and playfully batting around our notions of what a nice story should look like. The ending is a bit of a cop-out I feel (he just talks him into submission? C'mon...) but the ending is almost perfunctory. The real fun all along has been bumbling and wandering our way to the ending. That we can end on a coherent note is just icing on the cake.