My Rating: 4.0/5.0
Nearly every popular kid’s product out there at some point comes out with a movie, or TV show. “My Little Pony” very recently became popular movies and TV shows both, loved by all ages. The “Barbie” industry has about 25 movies out since they started booming in 2001 with “Barbie and the Nutcracker”. Care Bears, though they may nowadays be a bit outdated, had a few movies along as well. Now, in 2014, “The LEGO Movie” is introduced, with an outstanding opening weekend grabbing in an estimated $69,000,000 in the United States alone. Thousands of children, teenagers, and adults saw the film and it came back with rave reviews. An 82 on the metascore, which I think is great a score especially for a movie aimed mostly toward children.
To start off with a short summary, this movie is about the ordinary life of a LEGO mini figure man, named Emmet. He’s one of those people who follows the crowd and does his best to fit in to society without discrimination against him. He finds a lego piece known as the “piece of resistance”, the key to saving the LEGO world. Everyone thinks he is this master builder who knows how to build everything very easily. But really, he wasn’t that special. And, of course, there’s always a bad guy, and in this case, it’s “President Business”, a man who wants perfection for the world, and everything to be how he wants it. In the end, Emmet finds out that everyone is special, but in their own way. This message is portrayed through a very clear, not forced, way.
My biggest problem with this film is that it left you on a bit of a cliffhanger in few parts. A few friends and I got confused as to if a particular character died, but I highly doubt it. Another slight problem I found was that Will Ferrell’s character was known as 3 different people, and two of them were “Lord Business” and “President Business”. They referred to him as both (and a completely different one), but that got to be a bit confusing. Why would they call him both, when a president and lord could be interpreted as two separate people?
It really did seem like there was a foreshadowing of some sort that could lead to a sequel. It certainly got reviews great enough to make it happen. The LEGO industry is so big that they could easily make another. I believe this is why there are so many movies/shows made from products. Media like this has so many new possibilities as to what we can do with movies nowadays, the possibilities are nearly endless. You could probably do more with the movie than you could with the actual product. Other than those few parts I was confused on, it was an overall great, funny, kid-friendly movie, but made for all ages.
Christopher Miller, who directed and wrote the screenplay, talked about how they made the movie on twitter. He tweeted on February 3, 2014:
@DrewAtHitFix it was mostly CG with some stop motion & also some real LEGO still sets comped in. But Animal Logic made the CG photoreal.
He would not tell what was stop motion and what was CGI, but I find it really fantastic that both were used in the film. It takes a lot of time, effort, and talent to do that kind of thing. So many people worked on this movie; 2 directors, 6 writers, and 18 producers, as well as a countless number of guest voiceover actors. Will Ferrell, as I stated before, was the bad guy in the situation. Liam Neeson’s character was distinct and he was a funny character. And, of course, Morgan Freeman was perfect for the role he was put in. More actors such as Charlie Day, Allison Brie, Dave Franco, Jonah Hill, and Nick Offerman played a part of this outstanding movie.
Lastly, may I say again, there was a huge moral to this story, which is perfectly tied into the plot. It was not forced into the movie like lots of recent movies. The first movie that comes to mind when I think of this problem is “Wreck-it-Wralph” You could tell the writers were pushing that lesson into the movie, and a lot of other movies today (specifically animated children’s movies). I don’t think that’s a good way to show kids what’s morally “right” and “wrong”. There are much better ways to do this, and a great example, is, in fact, “The LEGO Movie”
Kelsey's Movie Reviews 