The Lego Movie ****
Dirs: Phil Lord,
Christopher Miller. With the voices of: Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Charlie
Day. 100 mins. Cert: U
An unexpected joy. Phil
Lord and Christopher Miller, the nutty professors behind Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, have picked up the pieces that
might have made for a throwaway brand-expansion exercise – hey, Smurfs movies – and instead fashioned a
work of unbridled imagination, apt to delight sociologists, stoners and
six-year-olds alike. Lego logic has been respected in the assembling of its
meticulous yet changeable and spontaneous-seeming universes; our humble
everyman hero progresses from guileless construction drone to revolutionary
Master Builder (very Joseph Campbell) in cherishably jerky motions. Countless
pauseworthy flourishes should send DVD presales rocketing, yet the zappiness
generates as many drolly satirical gags, finessed by the voice cast’s
sitcom-sharpened timing. It doesn’t think outside the box so much as operate on
another astral plain entirely, yet even at its craziest, the film retains a
tactile, DIY-ish charm: it may be the closest any American animation has come
to emulating the ludic spirit of Aardman or Adam & Joe.
The Lego Movie is in cinemas nationwide.
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