The Lego Movie: Everything Is Awesome!!!

After completely missing it in theaters, I finally watched The Lego Movie last week. And it was as delightful as I had been promised. It was also the weirdest, most meta movie I had seen in a while. It is unabashedly tongue-in-cheek throughout and satirizes the standard tropes of animated movies while making numerous pop cultural references to everything from Lord of the Rings to Batman. If there's a Lego version of a famous movie character, it shows up in this movie and comes in for a fair share of mockery.

The movie's "hero" is Emmet, a construction worker who always follows the instructions and thinks "everything is awesome," as declared by the most popular song playing on the radio. When he inadvertently stumbles across the "Piece of Resistance," he uncovers a secret plot by Lord Business, an evil tycoon who has been trying to take over the Lego realms by stifling creativity and insisting that everything be constructed according to the instructions. The entire movie is a commentary on people who think Lego should only be used to follow the instructions laid out in the kit, versus people who want to play and create something new. It is incredibly clever storytelling that might soar right over the heads of younger children if it wasn't for a strange moment at the end of the movie that makes this subtle commentary hilariously overt.

The voice actors are brilliant in this movie, led by Chris Pratt, who imbues Emmet with all the likable goofiness that he brings to his characters in other movies or TV. His co-stars include the hilarious Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett as an exceedingly dark and broody Batman, Morgan Freeman playing a Gandalf-esque wizard in a send-up of his usual voiceover roles as God or some wise old man, and a host of other wonderful comedians and actors who keep the proceedings upbeat and entertaining.

The visuals are also stunning. The animation team has rendered every single thing in Lego, constricting themselves only to movements that Lego pieces can perform, or brick pieces you would find in a regular Lego kit. Even a sequence involving a vast ocean has waves rendered in Lego and it is an amazing feat of ingenuity. Every frame makes it apparent that a great deal of thought and love has gone into both the story and look of this movie.

The Lego Movie is a wonderful film that showcases how supposed "children's movies" have turned into hugely entertaining blockbusters with meta-commentary for adults. This film doesn't even stay meta and completely bares its premise, in a move which was certainly one of the more intriguing things I'd seen all year. So watch the movie and let me know what you think of the bizarre twist at the end. I barely played with Lego as a kid, but this movie certainly showed me what I had been missing.