You probably know I'm a huge fan of The Lego Movie from 2014. What could have been a feature length commercial geared towards kids turned out to be a clever, fun, action film with great characters and an emotional punch of a third act twist. I think it's the best animated movie since The Incredibles in 2004.
So now we (finally) have the Lego Movie 2. Carol and I were lucky that some friends won free preview tickets and took us, so we saw it a few days before it came out. Now, a couple weeks later, after seeing it again, I'm finally getting around to writing about it. There are very minor spoilers below, most of which you'd see from the trailer.
Lego 2 starts immediately after the end of the first Lego Movie, with Bricksburg being invaded by the Duplo alien invaders, so you get to see the immediate aftermath of the attack and Emmet's disastrous attempt to make peace. After a five year jump, Bricksburg has become Apocalypseburg and there's a lot of fun Mad Max style parody, but, you know, with Legos. Wyldstyle seems to revel in this new, grim environment, while Emmet is his usual cheerful self, causing some fun friction.
To its credit, the movie doesn't try to repeat the same trick as the first and makes it clear from the beginning that the drivers of the action are the boy from the first movie, Finn, and his younger sister, Bianca.
What follows is completely different from the first Lego movie, which is great. Did I mention that Lego 2 is also a musical? Yeah, they sing and the songs are fun. So, pretty ambitious. Shockingly I know, once again there's a twist, and it actually works! I also appreciated that all the characters are back, although a couple are back only very, very briefly. (I love how the Trump surrogate Lord/President Business excuses himself from the action).
Of course, it's not as good as the first Lego Movie. That movie took off and never stopped moving, continually adding fun, interesting characters with their own unique craziness and points of view, until the third act twist which brought it all together. Seriously, it's great.
The first time I saw Lego 2 I thought the pacing was slow for the first half of the movie, although I didn't have the same reaction on second viewing. I do think that the fun supporting characters (Unikitty, Metal Beard, and Benny) are underused, while Will Arnett's Batman, as great as this version of the character is, is overused. I really like the new character, Rex, a mashup of all of Chris Pratt's regular movie roles (space cowboy, raptor wrangler). Pratt voices him, in addition to Emmett, and he talks exactly like Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China. I LOVED that.
And regardless of the concerns I had about the pacing, the movie absolutely sticks the landing, achieving a good emotional resolution. If you liked the first one, you should go see Lego 2. Do it soon because it probably won't be in theaters for too much longer.
One more thing.
Whatever the final verdict on its quality, Lego 2 very cleverly and movingly turns its ear-worm of a conformist song from the first movie, Everything is Awesome, into an anthem for the Resistance. A song of hope for these troubled days. I am not joking.
Listen to the words. I'll be listening to this song for a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment