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A scene from movie, "The Lego Movie". – Courtesy Photo |
Everything really is awesome, if you think about it.
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Well, some of them do hit at a dizzying pace. But don’t worry, in the screenplay by directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (on the story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Mr. Lord and Mr. Miller), it’s not about worrying about what you’ve missed (Lego-lized cameos by Abe Lincoln, Harry Potter, Dumbledore, Gandalf, Wonder Woman, Superman, Han Solo, Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon) – rather it’s about worrying of what will hit you next. It’s a simultaneous influx of stuffing too much too quickly, in an already clogged working space.
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A scene from movie, "The Lego Movie". – Courtesy Photo |
At times, the imagination feeding The Lego Movie feels one part childhood, constructed on impulsive half-thought-out storytelling using the vast library of Lego figures the producers have at their disposal, and one-part play-it-safe corporate movie-making logic (the love story of an underdog hero). It’s a wonderful, lurid mess occasionally; sometimes, it’s simply lurid…in a good way. Kind of like our juvenile days when we couldn’t care less about building a play-set by reading the instruction manual. (By the way, that’s one of the messages in the movie as well; you don’t need instructions to have fun).
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A scene from movie, "The Lego Movie". – Courtesy Photo |
The panicky story set-up “fixes” quite literally on Emmet (Chris Pratt), a near-invisible “yellow” construction worker who may be the prophesized “special” capable of taking out Lord Business, and restoring order (or lack thereof) to the Lego world (Lord Business, has Bricksburg barricaded-off from other Lego realms). Mistaken as a master builder, someone who can make any contraption out of available Lego pieces, Emmet is rescued (read: un-willfully taken) by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a hot-looking master builder, the wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) – with later helped by Batman (Will Arnett) – from Bad Cop (Liam Neeson), a “super secret”, can’t-hold-me-down, Policeman sicced by Lord Business.
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A scene from movie, "The Lego Movie". – Courtesy Photo |
Emmet, who knows he isn’t “special”, is too kind, too meek, and too unimaginative to be a part of a grand plan about saving the universe from Kragle, and by the time the movie gives us its big reveal, some of us are more than liable to kick someone close to us in the shins.
A word of advice: let it sink in (it will take a minute or two). It’s a part of the movie that clears up the extemporized flow of the screenplay. The sense of familiarity (the movie is computer animated, but has the aesthetic of stop-motion), and the extravagated production design and action (which would be extremely problematic if done in stop-motion), has a newfangled feeling of played it all before (if you forget the overbearing big, bad, corporate-mogul-rules-all logic). And maybe you may have. Or, after seeing the movie, you may now want to.
Released by Warner Bros, and HKC Entertainment in Pakistan, the movie is rated PG for fast action, some shrewdly played wordplay and a sense nostalgia that modern video games cannot pacify.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller; Produced by Dan Lin and Roy Lee; Written by Mr. Lord and Mr. Miller (based on a story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Kageman, Mr. Lord and Mr. Miller); Cinematography by Pablo Plaisted; Edited by David Burrows and Chris McKay; Production design by Grant Freckelton; Music by Mark Mothersbaugh.
Starring the voices of: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman.