Review - The Lego Movie

I went to see the Lego Movie this morning with my eight year old son. We both laughed out loud at it. A lot! It was seriously funny for most of the movie, some of it was slapstick and some of it was pretty geeky side jokes. Either way we had a whole lot of fun watching it. As the theme song goes, ‘Everything is Totally Awesome!’

The premise of the movie is a pastiche on the ancient prophecy tale where a hapless youth discovers he is the chosen one a little earlier than he’s ready to deal with it. A mentor sees him through it and good triumphs over evil in the end. In the case of the Lego movie this sees a standard construction worker (Emmett) become the master builder who will save the Lego universe from the evil President Business who wants to deploy the Kragle (or more accurately Kr## gl#e) to end the universe. Wyldestyle is the other main character, a pretty hip and cool girl with lots of awesome moves and better dialogue.

While there are loads of laughs in the movie, it definitely counts as a comedy in my book) there is also a strong element of encouraging creativity in the use of Lego. The master builders who don’t follow the instructions, but have them in their heads, are the heroes of the piece. The instruction followers that want to glue together the models to stop them being rebuilt into more interesting shapes are the bad guys. Although the best bad guy in it was Bad Cop, voiced by Liam Neeson, who also turned into Good Cop when his head rotated round, at least until President Business took a q-tip with nail polish remover to his good face. A geeky joke for Lego enthusiasts.

That said, my favourite line of the movie, right at the end, was delivered from some Duplo characters that had beamed down from a glitterball disco spaceship. Delivered in the voice of small pre-schooler girl “We come from the planet Duplo. We are here to destroy you.”

Well worth watching, and take the kids along, whether or not they play with Lego.