What American kid hasn't played with Lego blocks? They even have thees now, from popular movies and TV shows, and include playsets that make the humble beginning in the late 1950s look like another world.
The Lego people even have a popular series of video games and cartoons. This movie is not those, but some of the characters cameo, including the ninjas, DC superheroes, some Star Wars guys, and the whole city set building team, and even sports stars.
The movie centers on a fictional Lego city state that apparently is ruled by the evil President Business, possibly a riff on any number of rich politicians from today, who wants to destroy the town using some type of space glue.
Enter the hero, an ordinary worker named Emmit who falls into a hole made from the bricks and discovers a mystical red brick that makes him the chosen one, and it is up to his bad girl new friend to help him find the aged blind master who trained her.
The nods to any number of themes from spaghetti westerns, to Wall street movies, to classic 80s movies and toys, to oddly enough, the Village People, are everywhere. Pirates, space heroes, and submarines go toether as do madmen with evil laser beam machines that shoot colored pogs. A silly song about being awesome is all the town listens to, and as silly sitcom about a man losing his pants is their only reality show.
The supposed perfect worlds is shattered brick by brick as the villain unleashes his furious lego army of zombies and crooked robots, and ninjas, and whatnot, against the hero and his girl sidekick, or is it girl and her dude sidekick? Anyway, the characters eventually meet up with Batman, (from the set my nephew has), space pirate robot, and a spaceman from the 1980s sets (which I used to have), and the Justice League and various odd characters. They even have an Abe Lincoln and a bipolar suffering kitty cat that mocks the My Little Pony line. Ha.
When the nobody becomes a somebody, the sweetness of this little film comes out, and when he discovers the master builder, ala a twist, it is rather obvious but cute also.
It does make you want to go out and buy toys. However the toys that are being marketed for this movie are way too expensive to start collecting them again.
Review by Adam Browne
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