I was pretty excited to see The LEGO Movie. The trailer looked cute and funny, the voice actors were all appealing and the animation accurately depicted LEGOs. However, this movie fell short of any expectations I had.
To begin, the premise of the movie seemed interesting and had a very 1984 feel to it, though in a distinct kid-like way. Emmett (voiced by Chris Pratt) is your ordinary, run-of-the-mill construction worker LEGO, who goes about his life blissfully happy and always follows the instructions. This all changes when he stumbles upon, quite literally, the “piece of resistance.”
He then is swept up into this adventure with Wyldstyle (voiced by Elizabeth Banks), who mistakes him as “The Special,” the one who will stop the evil Lord Business, aka President Business (voiced by Will Ferrell). Along the way they meet a huge assortment of LEGO characters, from the wise old MasterBuilder, Vitruvius (voiced by Morgan Freeman), to superheroes Batman (Will Arnett), Superman (Channing Tatum), Wonder Woman (Cobie Smulders) and Green Lantern (Jonah Hill), to Star Wars characters C-3PO (voiced by original actor Anthony Daniels), Lando (also voiced by the original actor Billy Dee Williams), Han Solo (Keith Ferguson) and Chewbacca. The end had a very interesting twist that I simply can’t spoil, and it was so unexpected that it worked in favor of the movie.
Sadly, the movie, with all its good intentions, failed to wow me. The plot was simple, because, after all, this is a children’s movie, but the filler in between meandered and lost me a little bit. The pace itself was kind of slow and lacked a sense of adventure. The humor was mildly satisfying, mostly tongue-in-cheek, a little offbeat, but not very successful or outright hilarious.
That’s is a shame, because, in my opinion, the writers of this movie were intelligent and could have put in more witty humor that would be appealing to both kids and adults. For instance, the fact that the writers named a character Vitruvius, who happens to be an ancient Roman architect, shows at least an inkling of intelligence.
Quite honestly, the most appealing part of the movie was the plethora of actors who signed on to give voices to these characters. Pratt (Zero Dark Thirty), Banks, Arnett, Freeman and Ferrell all voice the main characters. These were phenomenal casting decisions (honestly, who wouldn’t want to hear Morgan Freeman’s voice?) even if the movie didn’t do these actors’ talents justice.
In addition, many other actors lent their voices to the film such as Liam Neeson, Tatum, Shaquille O’Neal, Alison Brie (Mad Men, Community), Dave Franco (21 Jump Street, Now You See Me), Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Hill (Superbad, The Wolf of Wall Street) and many others. Some of the funniest content came from these characters, with Neeson’s Bad Cop/Good Cop character, Tatum’s Superman and Hill’s Green Lantern stealing the show.
Unfortunately, the movie was overall vapid. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the missing piece was in this film, although it is apparent something is missing. It’s probably a great film to see with a little brother, cousin, niece or nephew, but The LEGO Movie is hardly good enough to see with friends your own age.
Critic’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Claire Farrow can be reached at claire.farrow@spartans.ut.edu