The LEGO Movie

As a toy, Lego has always been one that rests on imagination.  You are given interlocking pieces of different sizes and shapes, and you can build until either your ideas reach an end or the blocks do.  As a child, I would sit on my bedroom floor with pieces strewn about me, ready to be assembled into whatever shape would fit the elaborate story my mind was concocting.  This has always been the power of the toy, and it is easy to say that The Lego Movie not only told a great and fun story, but also perfectly nailed the spirit behind the toy.

It is a world that consists of only Lego, which may just seem like an interesting concept to others, people of artistic or construction based minds can spend much of the film marveling over how the toy was incorporated and inserted into every structure, vehicle, or object.  Where animated films generally just create environments, The Lego Movie created them based in the realm of the toy, which meant every single thing in the movie (right down to smoke and water), needed to be able to be created from actual pieces.  While the story was unfolding, it was hard to not continually marvel at how it was all design, how pieces were used, and the layered concept behind the creation of the environment.

Visually, it was stunning, and I would quickly watch the film again just to pay more attention to how the background was constructed.  A portion of the film used stop motion, which I felt really kept a trueness to what a world made of Lego would be.  Apparently there were almost four million pieces used in this movie, and I read that if you were to reconstruct everything you would need over 15 million pieces.  I find myself just blown away by the creative minds that were able to envision the physical landscape in the kind of way needed to pull it off.

Mixed in with all of the beauty of the movie was the story of an extremely normal Lego construction worker named Emmett (Chris Pratt) who stumbles onto something special and finds out that he is the one who was prophesied to save the Lego universe from the plans of the evil President Business (Will Ferrell).  He gets help from Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), one of the remains ‘master builders’ (someone who is able to create amazing and unique objects from the Lego pieces around them), who takes Emmett to meet the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) and gains help from the ever so awesome and helpful Batman (Will Arnett).  The base may follow the overly used ‘chosen one’ story line, but it does it in a fresh and innocent way, and when the entire concept of the story is revealed, the whole tale becomes very touching and endearing.

Director’s Christopher Miller and Phil Lord really set the bar for what an all-ages film can be.  The sentiment of the story can hit the hearts of both children and adults, as well as delivering a very entertaining film.  As well as being a viscerally stimulating experience, there are multiple levels of humour that engage both children and adults.  While the kids get to laugh at the fun comedy that lays on the surface (something the adults also get to laugh at) the keen eyes get to gain joy in some of the subtle nuances of the film as well as some of the pop culture references that make their way into the movie.

Of course, all of this would be for not if the actors were delivering monotone performances, and believe me, they sure were not.  This is one of the best voiced animations I have seen since Toy Story, as all of the actors seemed to just be completely throwing themselves into their roles fully.  While I was watching the movie, I was imagining the people sitting in front of a microphone, reading their lines with their faces contorting and arms flailing wildly as they completely got sucked into their roles.  This was not just the case with the main cast, but with side characters and cameos as well.  I could write and write about how amazing Liam Neeson was as Good Cop/Bad Cop, and how adorable yet dementedly crazy Alison Brie was as Unikitty.  There are too many names to bring up in this conversation, as it was incredible from top to bottom.

When I left the theatre, I was stuck thinking about the movie more and more.  I wanted to head to my parent’s house and try to uncover the old boxes of Lego, and start to become a master builder myself.  That movie worked on me.  While perhaps some may worry that it could be a feature length commercial for the toy, it was not.  The reality is that it was a feature length tribute to the spirit of imagination that the toy brings out in people… how it can turn children into sophisticated architects and turn adults into children, and it succeeded perfectly.

Rating – 4 out of 4 stars

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

The legend does continue in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, but does it need to?  I suppose that is the major question that I have regarding many sequels, especially comedy follow-ups which usually turn out to be a simple repackaging the same jokes but in slightly altered formats.  Myself, I landed on the fence with Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy which seemed to be a decent success in theatres and won the hearts of many audience members.  I found that the movie was a collection of a number of jokes that failed for me, but that had some moments of brilliance where I could not stop laughing.

That is really about how I will sum up the sequel, which I felt did to a bit better in its failed to succeeded joke ratio than the original.  The movie is littered with moment after moment that is supposed to be funny, and the majority of those never quite hit home with me and merely reminded me of what I would laugh at when I was in grade four.  The film is without much of a plot (that should not be a big surprise to any), and just is a mode to usher in the next batch of ‘comedic’ moments.

While admitting the complete lack of traction that so many of the jokes wound up with, it was the ones that hit their mark that established and maintained the tone of fun in the film.  Perhaps maybe only thirty percent of the jokes made me laugh, a percentage that would easily make me think that the film was dreadful.  However, it was the thirty percent that I found so much delightful that it somehow managed to outweigh what the majority of the film was.  One thing that I am great full to the talent behind Anchorman 2 is the fact that it does not resort to toilet humour and mean humour.  There may be a little bit here and there, but for the most part it is a very honest, sincere, and purposefully naïve film.

It stars Will Ferrell who plays the role of Ron Burgandy, a true man of the news who has hair to cause the gods to stumble with envy and a mustache that could have built Rome in a day.  Returning to their roles as the rest of the news crew is Steve Carrell as the weather dullard Brick Tamland, Paul Rudd as the sexually styling reporter Brian Fantana, and David Koechner as the politically incorrect sports reporter Champ Kind.  For fans of the original movie, there may be very little disappointment found in what lies in wait for these characters who are questing to reclaim their former news casting glory.

But, on the flip side, for people who were not fans of the original, or are fence sitters like myself, this film probably will not win you over completely to the franchise.  It was a funnier film than the first one, but it still has so much that misses the mark for me.  I suppose there is a plot and story to the movie, but none of that really matters.  This film is all about the delivery of the zingers, and the inconsistency in which it accomplishes that task is what keeps it from being a great comedy.

Rating – 2.5 out of 4 stars

Everything Must Go

Today has mostly been spent in bed, feeling ill and talking to my wife in jagged sentences.  My wife seems to have gotten a good giggle or two from my impaired speech abilities, so I guess it is all worth it.  The nice thing is that there has been no stress or anxiety today, which is a bit of a blessing.  I have been getting a bit better at being proactive and responding as quickly as possible to anything that could cause stress.  Victory be for me, I should say... other than temporarily praying for the walls to collapse around me so I would be relieved of this headache.  Perhaps a little bit of an over exaggeration.  Anywho, enough about that and on to today's review, which is a movie called Everything Must Go.

This movie had been pitched to me as a comedic drama, but really it is a character story that does have some elements of comedy in it.  It is the tale of a man whose addiction to alcohol has cost him both his job and his marriage in the same day, and the personal path that these developments send him down.  We meet Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) in a way that seems to be a very typical narrated introduction, but then turns out to be a link from the image of the man we see before us to only a few hours earlier when his life was just about to unravel.  Nick has had a long career with his employer, and in with the good times there were some bad ones, a long list of issues that arose from his problematic drinking. 

After losing his job, and turning to fermented drink with wide open arms, he arrives at home to find all of his belongings laid out on the front lawn and all the locks and security codes have been changed.  He chooses to spend the night on the furniture on the lawn, drinking of course, when the police are called by neighbours.  As luck would have it for Nick, his AA sponsor is a police detective who is able to get the fuzz off his back and finds a loop hole that will allow Nick to keep the items on the lawn for no longer than five consecutive days as long as it is declared a yard sale.

In this movie we saddle up and ride on a five day journey with a man who loses everything except for his desire to drink.  While everything that has happened to him can be traced back to that nasty addiction, he clings on to the one thing that he has left, reaching points of desperation such as begging, and trying to slurp the last drops of beer from discarded cans lying about his front lawn.

One of the main strengths of this movie is the actors, who are able not just to own their lines but present themselves as actual living, breathing members of the world.  We are able to buy into their reality and existence thanks to a great casting job and terrific performances.  Ferrell does a terrific job, but so does Christopher Jordan Wallace who plays Kenny, a neighbourhood boy who buddies up with  Halsey.  The chemistry between Ferrell and Wallace is abundant, and it allows us to see a sympathetic and vulnerable side to Halsey.

The subject matter is quite deep and will hit home for a lot of people, and it is handled quite well by all involved.  It does not delve too deep, but also does not leave everything at surface level.  You get an understanding of the turmoil and cost that addiction brings with it, and the impossible nature of the battle for sobriety.  One day at a time is the saying for Alcoholics Anonymous, but Ferrell’s character shows that such thinking is impossible when one is looking both in the past and lamenting the present.  Hope can never come from such perspectives, and it is only when the focused is shifted to the present with a mind for the future that things can get better.

Rating – 3 out of 4 stars