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The LEGO Movie Builds a Masterpiece Brick by Brick

If "The Monuments Men" is the first great movie of 2014, "The LEGO Movie" is the first masterpiece of 2014! Yeah, you read that right, "The LEGO Movie!" This is a flick that could very well take its place beside the "Toy Story" movies for how smart, clever and ambitious it is. It's quite the genre buster, actually. It's a film like "Toy Story" that kids are going to love, but that parents are going to "get" on a whole deeper level. It also poses a challenge for me, as a reviewer, because so much of what makes this film such an instant classic takes place in its final act, its last 15 or 20 minutes. But to reveal the turns the story takes would be absolutely criminal. I would have to be put in Journalist's Jail and placed on Reviewers' Row. So, I'm just going to discuss the film's surface pleasures, for the most part. And there are so many. The film is worth seeing just for its heady riffs on pop culture; its spot-on commentary on contemporary conformist society where we have the illusion of diversity, but are so quick and eager to be pigeon-holed; its critical takes on modern... Oops, there I go again! Getting so deep into my analysis that I start to give away the fact that... well... "The LEGO Movie" isn't for kids at all! It's for grown-ups! It's for those open to an experience akin to "The Matrix." You might very well leave the theater after seeing this and tweet, text or post "OMG... LEGO Movie... mind blown!" And then look down at your handheld device, your dumbphone, your personal digital enabler and say, "My God! What am I doing with my life?! What happened to my imagination?! What happened to my questioning of all things?!" The fact that the LEGO folks have placed their toy bricks empire into the hands of the subversive writing and directing team of Phil Lord and Chris Miller is pretty darn close to a modern movie miracle, in my book. Lord and Miller first turned the "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" children's book into a wildly entertaining riff on consumption, invention and re-invention. A couple of years later, they took a moribund TV franchise from the late 1980s and turned "21 Jump Street" into the best buddy cop film in at least a decade. Now, they've taken LEGOs and essentially made a film that explores what happens to a society when it limits thinking, stops questioning, constrains imagination and comes to value order over discovery. As with "Cloudy" and "Jump Street," Lord and Miller know that the first place to start in making a great high-concept picture is with the script. Get the script right before you do ANYTHING else! And they have here. Second, get the right cast. Chris Pratt delivers an affecting vocal turn as Emmet, a worker-bee construction guy in a LEGOland metropolis ruled by the manipulative tyrant President Business (voice of Will Ferrell). Emmet is plucked from obscurity by a Trinity-like LEGO action babe named Wyldstyle (voice of Elizabeth Banks) and taken to a Morpheus-like resistance leader named Vitruvius (voice of Morgan Freeman), where he is told that he is "The One" essentially - a fabled MasterBuilder who can prevent the LEGO world from being destroyed. Emmet, though, has spent his entire life conforming to society, following its "instructions" and never once disobeying signs that seem to constantly be telling him and the masses "Don't Touch" and "Keep Out." When he starts to tinker, though, a strange, almost otherworldly chaos begins to set in. But, that's because there is always something else going on both below the surface of "The LEGO Movie" and from above. It's a film that will certainly reward repeat viewings. And it's a movie that will hopefully provide the building blocks for more heady family entertainment in the near future. "The LEGO Movie" is rated PG for mild action and some rude humor.