Everything Is Awesome! (The Lego Movie review)

As you might expect (at least, if you've been following along for any length of time), The Lego Movie has been a big deal in this house for... well, a while. I don't, now, remember when my kids first heard about it, but there's been growing excitement about it much in the way of the excitement around Star Wars back in the 90s when Lucas announced that he was going to make the prequels. It's an odd thing, though, since our house has been full of Lego movies for more than a decade, back when the first Bionicle movie came out. Of course, those old Bionicle movies aren't quite the same as the ones that came after the Lego Star Wars video game, which, in many ways, inspired this whole trend in Lego movies. Which is not to say that that is what inspired "brickfilms," because the first known brickfilm was made in the 70s, but it was after Lego Star Wars that the concept really took off. Needless to say, we own a vast assortment of Lego movies and shorts.

Honestly, The Lego Movie didn't quite live up to the standard that Lego has established with their direct to video productions.

Yes, this will be full of spoilers.

First, let me just say, the movie is good. It's a lot of fun and a lot of funny. For pure enjoyment, The Lego Movie did its job. I laughed a lot and so did my kids. The song, "Everything Is Awesome," is ongoing in my house, now. The actors did a great job with the voices, especially Will Arnett as Batman and Charlie Day as Benny. The animations was great and is full of more details than you can actually while sitting in the theater. Since this is a movie that we will almost certainly buy, I'm looking forward to being able to pause it in order to look for all of the things I missed and read the numerous background signs that whiz past in all of the action.

The issue I have with the movie is the story. Or its lack to effectively establish one story.

Most of the movie revolves around the story of Emmet Brickowoski, a generic Lego minifigure. He is so generic, in fact, as to be unrememberable. He is devastated to learn that when he went missing no one really noticed that he was gone. He wasn't special in any way. He had nothing that set him apart in any way. Nothing that made people say, "Oh, yeah, that guy!" Which is why he found the idea of being "the special" so appealing. Once he realized that he wasn't, that is.

The problem was that Emmet only knew how to follow the rules and didn't know how to do anything without his instruction book. Because he has become the subject of the prophecy, they need to teach him how to be "the special," which really doesn't go well. He has no imagination and is unable to come up with anything beyond his "bunk couch" idea. Eventually, though, he does begin show some capacity to lead and, just as he is beginning to get into his role as "the special," his mentor is killed and reveals that there never really was a prophecy: He just made it up. Before dying, though, he tells Emmet that all he needs to do to be special is to decide to be special. Basically, he can do it if he just believes in himself.

That's fine as the message of a movie. I mean, it's a pretty common message for movies. "All you need to do to succeed is to believe in yourself." You can't be special if you don't think you are. Personal feelings about that message aside, Emmet doesn't fall for it. He's devastated to learn that there is no "special" and that he's not it. He does make the move, though, to save his friends, specifically Wyldstyle, and sacrifices himself to the void to free them.

And ends up in the real world. Our world. Where the movie and the message change and, really, completely undermine the original message.

Once we get out into the real world we find that the actual conflict is between a boy and his father. The father believes in doing everything by the instructions, and the boy wants to build his own things. The father's Lego sets are off limits to his son, which is the issue, as we come to find out. While his father was at work, the boy has "wrecked" his father's stuff by rebuilding the rather miraculous sets into the story we've been watching. The conflict is about the rigidity of the father and whether the boy should be allowed to play with his father's toys.

Very little of the movie dealt with what was actually the ultimate story and conflict (and the one that my children resonated with, by the way), but it is the point of the movie. And I will leave the outcome of that unspoiled.

However, in dealing with that conflict, the father dismisses Emmet as "just a construction worker." A nobody. Which reveals to us why the character is so not special. However, the son responds, "No, Dad, he's the hero." Which reveals to us that Emmet actually cannot be special just because he decides to, just because he believes in himself. He is special because he was chosen to be special by the son. And that is the issue I have with the movie. It sets up this whole story about being special and believing in yourself and how that's all you really need but, then, says, "Never mind. You have to be chosen." Of course, they don't come out and say that, but, still, it's there.

So, from a story-telling perspective, the movie has some structural flaws. Despite that, though, as I said, it's very enjoyable, and, really, most people won't notice what I'm talking about anyway or feel any conflict from it. And, well, there's a great Lego Star Wars cameo. Being a Warner Bros. movie, the Marvel franchise was, unfortunately, left out. The movie was calling for some definite Hulk action.

Pacific Rim (part 2)

As I said last time, Pacific Rim was an amazing movie to watch. Seriously impressive visual display. And it leads off with it, too, as we start out right at the first Kaiju attack. The problem is that it's a prologue, and a prologue with voice over, at that. I really don't enjoy that kind of thing in movies. To compound the problem, it was the prologue to the prologue. Yes, the movie had to have two prologues. Just about the time I was allowing myself to get into the movie and be unannoyed by the prologue, we find out that what should have been the beginning of the movie was just another prologue. So, now, we're something like 20 minutes into the film, and the actual movie hasn't even started.

That issue with the storytelling ends up being the movie's greatest flaw. Basically, they started what was an epic tale spanning years and skipped to the last battle. There's no emotional connection to any of the characters, no foundation for the arbitrary scientific-sounding crap they fling at you in the same way that chimpanzees fling poo (and, yes, I have a story about that... for another day), and no logic to the things that happen. IF they had started at the beginning of the story or, at least, closer to it, they could have built something more believable. It's kind of too bad, because, like I said, visually amazing.

I'm not even going to get into the specific story issues. They are just too numerous to list. In fact, I'm sure I've forgotten most of them. Let's just say this movie is more hole than cheese (Swiss cheese, you know).  I'll sum it up this way: After the movie was over and my friends and I were comparing notes, so to speak, they were all about how great they thought it was. But I wasn't saying much. Not much more than it was amazing to look at, at any rate. And they're used to this from me, to me being the one most likely to not like a movie, but I was really trying not to say anything, but I guess I had this look on my face, because they were all like, "What? What was it that you didn't like? Because it was amazing." So I said I would share the one thing I thought was the most stupid (the arbitrary choice to have two pilots because the "neural load" was too much for one pilot (like I said, there's a lot of scientific-sounding crap flung at the audience to achieve what they wanted in the story, but that "neural load" crap is just that: crap)), and one of the guys started to respond with "but the right hemisphere and the left...," and I just kind of looked at him, and he stopped, and, then, all three of them started spewing various stupidities from the movie. And that lasted for something like half an hour, and I never brought up another thing. So, see, all three of these guys that walked out of the theater loving the movie couldn't hold the stupid back once the gate was open, much like the Kaiju gate in the movie.

I wish I could say something positive about the acting, but there's nothing there to talk about. No one was horrible, but no one was great, either. Or, even, all that good. It was a 'fest of mediocre. Okay, Charlie Day was good, but he was as good as it got. I mean, Idris Elba was so flat, they had to give him a nose bleed to pass for emotion.

The whole movie was like getting a giant present wrapped in the most awesome wrapping ever: glittery paper, bows, a great card, but, when you open it, you find an open package of chewing gum or something. To put it another way: big hat, no cattle.

But I'd still say to go see it at the theater, because it's just that kind of movie.

So... The movie ended, and we were heading out, trying to follow this other guy that had been with us, but he was on call there at LucasFilm, so he was heading back to his desk, so we started out going that way, too, so we ended up going off through the building into areas I had never been...

And there was just so much cool stuff! Around one corner was a display case with a tyrannosaurus Rex model in it from Jurassic Park and, down the hall, a case with a model of the foot structure of the T. Rex. And, of course, more movie posters. And, in a little lounge area, a suit of silver robot armor from some commercial ILM did at some point, and, on the other side of that, a set of Tatooine Stormtrooper (sandtrooper) armor! I so wanted to touch it; I mean, it was right there, but I restrained myself. There were display cases of models all down the halls; I don't even remember them all. And, in a room that I could see into (but the door was locked), a full-sized model of some Sith Lord. It was dark in there, so I'm not sure who it was, but the red lightsaber was very visible. It might have been Darth Maul, but it could have been one of the characters from Clone Wars, too.

The walk through the hallways of the LucasFilm building was more than worth any number of bad movies. Next time, I have to make sure I have my camera with me.