Thread: The LEGO Movie

So this is the film everybody is going ga-ga about? A whopping 96% on Rotten Tomatoes (as I write this)? Has the world succumbed voluntarily to some nefarious form of kiddie mass hysteria?

Apparently so!

Well I'm calling it: The LEGO™ Movie is a sugary sweet vacuous pop hit; it's a cinematic Macarena and that irritating "Everything Is Awesome" tune is it's Ketchup Song; it's a Wannabe Toy Story, but a Toy Story it ain't!

The film relies on over-stimulation and rapid fire cheap jokes to keep the instant gratification generation from slitting their wrists out of boredom - a process which usually takes all of about 5 minutes. I will concede that there is at least one "LOL" joke in it - that being the double-decker couch - but the bulk of the jokes are too cheap, too shallow and too disposable to be truly funny. LEGO™ is laughing, however - all the way to the bank!

There's enough LEGO™ geekisms to keep the fanbois masturbating throughout with floating virtual part numbers and legacy playsets and figurines littering the proceedings. And the producers have gone to some trouble to legitimise the solidity of the LEGO™ parts by adopting a "stop motion" animation style; which is to say that it's par for the course CG animation with 2 out of every 3 frames removed to make it jerky.

When it comes down to it, The LEGO™ Movie is not a bad movie but neither is everything awesome, it's just ordinary. In the cold, hard light of day, after the sugar rush has subsided (a detox process which may number many months admittedly), people will surely wonder why they thought this tasted so good.

5 out of 10