The Lego Movie

Starring: Chris Pratt, Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell

Directed by: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

Rating: I Liked It

While this movie carries a deserved 97% fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, I don't think I'd personally give it a nine out of ten or better. I did enjoy the movie. It had moments that made me laugh, moments that made me feel all sappy, and a little bit of a deeper meaning for kids and adults. My slightly less than perfect rating may have something to do with the pops it was given before I went to see it. So many people were talking about how good it was that I was really just set up for a fall. 

The good parts were definitely good. Seeing the main character, Emmet (Pratt), who is just a regular everyday kind of guy, step up to give a speech in front of his superiors that include Batman, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandalf was fun. Watching the clever twist of names of real world elements (a tube of scratched up Krazy Glue becomes Kragle) was a lot of fun. Seeing Liam Neeson play both good cop and bad cop in the same character was great. The transition scenes made with real Lego pieces with audio provided by human sound effects were amazing. 

The best part about the movie, though, is the messages it sends, and I make that plural, because I believer there were two very distinct messages, one for adults and one for kids. The message for the kids was pretty straight forward: everyone is special; you just have to find out what it is that makes you special. It wasn't some new-age ideal about everybody getting a trophy, but more about how each individual has something special to offer to the world and working to find out what it is. The message to the adults watching the film was a little more in-depth. 

The movie starts with a pretty glaring political commentary. The best example is the TV show that is everyone's favorite, a mindless comedy, Where Are My Pants? We follow that up with the hit song, "Everything is Awesome" and find out its sung by everyone everywhere. The shocker comes when we learn that the villain of the movie is now the president of the world, using all of these things to distract the masses from his evil master plan. The movie doesn't focus on this directly, but it does make you think about how we live our lives. 

So, with everything I mentioned above, I'd have to say that I did enjoy the movie, and I would recommend it for kids of all ages, even though some of the gags are run a little in the ground. I definitely think it could wait for a DVD/Blu-Ray release. It's not a theater must-see. It has done well enough to already have talks of the sequel in the works.