That feeling of nostalgia that’s building inside of you right now? That’s the feeling of somebody who knows has finally arrived.
Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s big-screen take on the small-blocked LEGO brand hits theaters today, equipped with a star-studded cast including the likes of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks and more. Here’s what else it’s equipped with: glowing praise from critics. Reviewers have given “The LEGO Movie” two thumbs up at nearly every turn. By all accounts, the animated comedy is a block-for-block success.
Read on for our round-up of “The LEGO Movie” reviews:
The Story
“Our everyman hero, Emmet (Chris Pratt), is the happiest guy in Bricksville: He’s gainfully employed as a construction worker (what else?), he adores his coworkers, and he knows that mighty President Business (Will Ferrell) has his best interests at heart. So when he’s thrown into an epic conflict between Business’s robot clones and the forces of creativity and invention (led, of course, by Batman and Abraham Lincoln), all Emmet wants is to get back to normality.” — Tom Huddleston, Time Out New York
The Target Audience
“Take a moment to remember the spaz. The hyperactive, highly-excitable enthusiast who can barely stay in one place for longer than sixty seconds and makes a little bit of a mess of things with his chaotic energy. ‘The LEGO Movie’ is the film for that person. From its opening frame to its surprisingly heartfelt conclusion, ‘The LEGO Movie’ has a bright and brash, candy-colored go go go dynamism that crackles with a glorious alacrity set to the tempo of the classroom’s biggest and most disruptive spaz.” — Jordan Hoffman, ScreenCrush.com
The Animation
“Reportedly part stop-motion, part CG-animation, you won’t notice the joins. There’s an insane level of invention on display — the world is brimming with hilarious background detail, and everything you can see is made of LEGO pieces, even the water. The characters are given more expressive eyes and mouths than their toy counterparts, but their movements are just as restricted — and the animation makes a virtue of this, from their clippy hands to their plastic wigs.” — Matt Maytum, Total Film
The Franchise Factor
“The ‘G.I. Joe’ franchise couldn’t do it. Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers’ movies never even tried. Leave it to ‘The LEGO Movie’ to become the first toy-based film to not only understand the various reasons why people play with the diversion in question, but to take the next logical step by figuring out how to ‘build’ its story off that attraction. Pun intended.” — Sean O’Connell, CinemaBlend.com
The Final Word
“The film functions as a massive homage to a shared childhood experience, amplified and projected on the bigscreen. So, while the result is undoubtedly the single most product-centric film of all time, it’s also just hip and irreverent enough to leave audiences feeling as though its makers managed to pull one over on the business guys. They’ve gotten away with something, upholding and expanding the worldwide Cult of Lego — the plot literally serves to cement the right and wrong way to play with the product — while good-naturedly skewering consumer culture at large.” — Peter Debruge, Variety
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