The Lego Movie
(2014)
(SPOILERS) The sheer, all-pervading awesomeness of The Lego Movie appears to have persuaded
even the sternest critical voice. It’s the animated movie of the year, the one
that everyone adores, and it isn’t even made by Pixar. I was fully prepared to
find it equally as awesome as everyone else; smart, self-aware, thematically
rich and very funny. And it is… but not quite to the unsurpassable classic
level I’d been led to believe. At it’s heart The Lego Movie has worthy but stolid messages about the values of
creativity and teamwork, wrapped in a bow so efficiently tied that it is very
hard not to be cynical over the plunge into genuineness. Phil Lord and
Christopher Miller are very clever, very funny guys, and when The Lego Movie is being very clever and/or very funny it deserves all the praise showered on it. I’m less convinced by
the treacly depths it plunders, however.
There has been much, and reasonable, mockery of the desperate
attempts to manufacture movies from disparate and seemingly unyielding toy
lines. If G.I. Joe makes for a fairly
viable transition, the consequences of adapting Battleship were many times worse than they seemed on paper. Ridley
Scott’s Monopoly has not yet seen the
light of day, but I wouldn’t hold out that it won’t ever come to pass. Of
course, Transformers has been massive
while entirely bereft of anything aside from technical virtuosity. The Lego Movie, an extended advert for
the Danish toy brick line, certainly looks like a challenge from a distance. It
requires a sly business sense (all those different theme sets to explore!) and
a tonality that requires equal doses of Toy
Story nostalgia and child’s eye view to make it play. The picture was in
development at Warner Bros as far back as 2008 (the story credit goes to Hotel Transylvania’s Dan and Kevin
Hagemen as well as Lord and Miller), but I’d be surprised if the success of Wreck-It-Ralph didn’t give an added spur
to the project; self-referential fictionalised game worlds brought to CGI life were
clearly be big bucks.
The quartet of screenwriters have furnished a self-aware
hero’s journey, one in which an average nobody (construction worker Emmet – voiced
by the new name du jour Chris Pratt – because Lego is fundamentally about
construction) is announced as the Special (the chosen one, the one with a destiny,
the latest of many such iterations the post-The
Matrix firmament) and must stop a destructive force (the Kragle) unleashed
by Lord Business (Will Ferrell) that threatens the Lego realm. Of course, he’s
sent on his quest by a wise guru (Morgan Freeman’s wizard Vitruvius) and has a tough,
independent girl to help him (Wyldstyle/Lucy, Elizabeth Banks).
The quest is an opportunity to dip into different
Legoverses, from the Wild West, and Middle Zealand (“a wondrous land, full of knights, castles, mutton, torture weapons, poverty,
leeches, illiteracy and, er, dragons”) to Cloud Cuckoo Land (where the are
“no rules, no government, no baby
sitters, no bedtimes, no frowny faces, no moustaches, and no negativity of any
kind”). It’s here that Lord and Miller are at their most engaged and
amusing, brandishing a cavalcade of familiar characters and faces.
This is also where The
Lego Movie most resembles a kid-friendly South Park (or should that be a parent-friendly South Park?) liberally taking pot-shots
at pop culture and casting its net of gags as broadly as possible. There’s even
a Cartman-esque bad cop in mirror shades (voiced to great comic effect by Liam
Neeson, who also provides his head-spinning alter ego Good Cop). Elsewhere, the
ghost of Vitruvius on a string is just the sort of fake-cheapness Parker and
Stone would embrace and “Where are my
Pants?” is a U certificate cartoon world spoofery along the lines of Terrence and Philip. The main difference
is, for all its scattershot sensibilities (maybe there’s not quite enough
political and social comment in here to qualify The Lego Movie as a junior Team
America but it certainly takes its cues from World Police in respect of “fake crude” animation), Miller and Lord
settle back on delivering a bona fide message. It’s a problematic decision, not
only because they engineer a Lego world/real world dual-layering but also because
the decision leaves the aforementioned queasy taste of pervading cynicism in the mouth.
The undercutting of the “chosen one” theme (“I made it up” says Vitruvius) is, on one
hand, a refreshing slap in the face to the myriad movies these days (any number
of them Young Adult fictions) that rely on a great messiah as the focus. It’s a
difficult narrative device to do well, and can muddy the waters of a perfectly
decent premise through over emphasis (look at the George Lucas prequels, where
everything and everyone is given underpinnings of destiny). A different problem
presents itself to Lord and Miller. Here they have decided the whole lesson is
that no one is special. Or rather, everyone
is special, and nothing is more special than the discovery and use of one’s
special individual creativity through applied teamwork. Then wonders can be
performed. Which is all, sort of, well meaning and quite nice as a sentiment.
But it relies on an intentionally bland leading character, a
nobody (“We’re trying to locate the
fugitive, but his face is so generic it matches every other face in our
database”). The subtext of the message is that aspiration towards achievement
is a worthless pursuit. We’re quite used to material where the true hero isn’t
nearly as interesting as the support (it’s true of everything from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings, and is an essential facet of the anti-hero);
it’s a different matter when you distil and draw attention to the indistinctiveness
of the everyman. What kid is seriously going to think Emmet (or Lucy, given how
clichéd her post-Buffy gender tropes
are) is more relatable than Will Arnett’s hilarious Batman? The message is entirely
wishy-washy, an adult’s therapy session idea of telling kids stuff in on
on-the-nose fashion (so they can understand, yes, because they’re all stupid).
It’s no wonder Fight Club satirised
such sentiments (“You are not a beautiful
or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else”;
or in this case the same plastic brickage). In due course, no doubt the
generation brainwashed by The Lego Movie
as kids will come full circle and pen or direct their own filmic backlashes.
This is the issue at the heart of the moral. There’s a
reason Pixar’s pictures historically – not so much in the last few years – have
been so good (and popular); they’ve really taken the time to thrash out the essentials
of their lead characters. Even Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph,
for all its third act failings, has an affecting and considered hero. The Lego Movie is (intentionally) a
blank slate and so it has to rely on a “real world” intrusion as an attempt to
move the audience. We don’t care about Emmet succeeding, discovering the hero
within, or winning Lucy (who is differently short-changed; with her devotion to
Batman and vacillation over Emmet, she is mostly an underdeveloped “because we
needed to put a girl in there” character; this is very much a boys’ movie).
The idea of encouraging the actualisation of creativity (“I don’t think he’s ever had an original
thought in his life” comments a character of Emmet, who eventually manages
to materialise a double-decker couch) is agreeable enough. The antithesis being
the path taken by Lord Business/The Man Upstairs (Finn’s dad in the real world)
into rigorous order, who follows instructions and glues all his Lego bricks
together so his kid can’t mess with them (the “8½ years later” subtitle is there
to signal the change in his outlook on having a son). Unfortunately, the
presentation is cloying. “You don’t have
to be the bad guy,” Emmet tells Lord Business, a representation of the way
Finn (Jadon Sand) sees his father (except, the licence here instils the plastic
folk a degree of autonomy; it’s a fair bet an eight-year old wouldn’t come up with
most of the material Miller and Lord do).
More than that, the picture equivocates its way out of any
position. Both creativity and following instructions have their place. It’s the
balance that fosters true growth and productivity. The ideal corporate
environment, in fact. While there are some witty hits on Hollywood think
(hiding something creative in something bland in order to get it passed through
the system), a picture that goes out of its way to tack on a moral ends up looking
ineffectual and desperate.
Many appear to have celebrated the live action section of
the film, the reveal that this is all the result of Finn at play in the rigid
realm of his father’s untouchable Lego collection. Apparently, the father-son
interplay even brought audiences to tears. I found it mainly manipulative and
reductive. There’s an interesting element in there, that of the puppet master/God,
and freewill or determinism; the Lego characters all believe themselves to be
masters of their own destiny but are apparently merely carrying out the instructions
of their household gods.
Or are they? While I baulked at the sentiment behind this
sequence, and found it slightly vulgar in that it seemed to be an overt
reminder (if any were needed) that Lego exists in reality and – hey – kids
young or old can go out and spend hundreds of dollars or pounds on it and have
fun with the stuff, I did enjoy the sequence where Emmet, stranded on The Man
Upstairs’ desk, struggles to escape while The Man keeps glimpsing something
out of the corner of his eye. Does Emmet have a life of his own, or is this
just Finn imaging him escaping? There’s an element of real imagination there,
the Toy Story idea that playthings
come to life when we aren’t looking at them. It’s the sort of thing that made The Phantom Tollbooth such a great idea
(escape into a cartoon world). In the main though, the live action section
pulls the picture down to Earth in a clumsy fashion. It’s not such an
intelligently devised meta-layer that it justifies itself. Both The Man and
Finn can play together, if only he rediscovers his playfulness (and if Finn
allows his sister to play too; admittedly a nice final sleight of hand).
A more honest approach might have been a full on “Yeah, glue
it together!” Then all of us at home will have to buy more and more Lego to
make more and more constructions. That said, I think the message is fairly
clear by this point in the movie that purchasing Lego brings untold joy and is
a true and singular outlet for one’s creativity. The between-two-stools
moderation of the picture allows Lord and Miller to take swipes at the very things
they are selling. Which is nice and all, but it has the effect of neutralising
any potency in the material. Self-awareness and satire is just a means of
making the audience comfortable with their own rampant consumerism, which is to
be encouraged or what is the point? If you’re conscious that your materialist
tendencies have run riot, at least no one can say you were hypnotised by all
those colourful bricks. The barefaced Transformers
movies obviously don’t have this problem, but if you show intelligence you
have to be able to withstand charges of hypocrisy in action. I expect most
would have to own up that The Lego Movie is suspect for those reasons, but it
is so effective most of the time that its appeal is undeniable. Still, I can’t
help gagging on the sugar-coated pill.
The cake-and-eat-it digs at consumerism very nearly help it
down, though. President Business may be intending to end the world, a
representation of Finn’s feelings about his father’s approach to toys, but he
also runs Octan; “They make good stuff;
music, dairy products, coffee, TV shows, surveillance systems, all history
books, voting systems… Wait a minute”. It represents the singularised,
corporate grasp of the monopolised modern world (dad wears a suit, so he’s just
another cog in that system). Greenpeace has cannily created significant adverse
attention for Lego with their mournful version of the infuriatingly catchy “Everyone is awesome” in a video depicting an Antarctic Lego landscape slowly flooding with oil. It’s a response
to Lego’s partnership with Shell, an on-and-off thing since the 1960s. Shell
branded products appeared all the way up until the mid-1990s. At which point
Lego created fictional company… Octan. Which is the movie’s exemplification of
bland consumerism. Doubtless Lord and Miller were aware of the connection (Lego
resumed its Shell partnership in 2011), and it’s a clever move but one that
seems particularly cynical (I know, I've used that word a lot) for the reasons cited above. It would be difficult
to see, say, Joe Dante being so willingly in thrall to his masters in his
pictures (Gremlins 2, and in
particular Small Soldiers which
lacerated the wheels of conglomerates with particular glee, right down to the
company buying the silence of families involved).
One wonders too what to make of the deconstruction of the
heroic ideal, as it extends to the religious identification figure Vitruvius
(Morgan Freeman has played God, of course); he manufactures a belief system for
his own ends and is revealed as one who rides on the coattails of success like
any politician (“I liked Emmet before it
was cool”). It ties in with the picture’s humanist “believe in your self”
fey ideal. There also seems to be sly dig
at Buddhism (clearing one’s mind to induce creativity, when someone with
nothing there at all can achieve the same thing).
So on the one hand The
Lego Movie is a troublingly jaundiced exercise, whereby it has the audacity
to preach at its audience while overtly selling them a product. On the other,
it’s very funny. Lord and Miller populate the picture with wall-to-wall visual
and verbal gags; far too many to take in even on several viewings. Batman might
be the most effectively realised; gloriously voiced by Arnett as a moody sod
really into his cool shit (“I only work
in black. And sometimes very, very dark grey”). His song about how
tormented he is (the first verse) is a sublime summary of how silly the Caped
Crusader essentially is (“Batman’s a true
artist; dark and brooding”), and his distaste for Cloud Cuckoo Land (“I hate this place”) is priceless. He’s
overwhelmingly egotistical (“First try”
he exclaims after numerous failed attempts to hit a switch with a spanner), has
his head in the sand about his alter ego (“Bruce
Wayne? Who’s that? Sounds like a cool guy”) but still comes up with the
best line in the picture (“I’m here to
see... your butt”).
Elsewhere, there’s Superman (Channing Tatum) and the doubly
meta- obsession Green Lantern (Jonah Hill) has with him; the actors’ “cool guy
and dork” partnership in 21 Jump Street,
and the unmitigated disaster of the Green
Lantern movie sees him attempting to ride Superman’s capetails. There are shout
outs to Indiana Jones (“Pigs – I hate pigs”), Star Wars (“Those guys were so lame. All they did was play Space Checkers”),
‘80s space Lego (Charlie Day as a crumpled astronaut determined to build a
spaceship) and Abraham Lincoln (“Get
ready for fourscore and seven years – in jail”), who gets
blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pistol whipped. Alison Brie’s Unikitty sets the tone
perfectly for Cloud Cuckoo Land which, when things go terrible wrong, includes
flaming unicorns thundering in panic across the screen.
The visual style of the picture is winning too, akin to stop
motion CGI, in which the clunky Lego has gone unmodified; the figures still
clutch drastically oversized objects in their pincer hands. So much is made of
this incongruity – close-up reactions of blank yellow faces blinking, slow
motion action sequences – it becomes an ingenious
choice when its directors aren’t too caught up in making the whole thing as
frenetic as possible.
No doubt the sequel will be more of the same; it’s notable
that such a big hit has made a limited dent on international markets, and it
will be interesting to see if there’s exponential growth the next time (its
multiplier played more to a typical US comedy product than an animation). The Lego Movie scores big on laughs, big
on wit and big on satire, but flounders when it comes to message. It’s Pixar-,
or even DreamWorks-, lite; we don’t care for the characters. It’s clever, but
not meaningful, appropriating the trappings of meaning but too knowing to
foster belief in what it is saying. It’s audacious of Lord and Miller to even
go there, in a product so transparent. To an extent, I was on board when it was
only the inter-world moral (as glib and inconsequential as it ultimately is) on
offer, but goodwill drained away when they tried to sell the family brought
together through a love of Lego. It’s brief but the fall-out is immense; possibly
the most misjudged blend of animation and live action since Osmosis Jones.
