tek's rating:

The LEGO Movie (PG)
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This came out in 2014, but I didn't see it until 2018. I'm glad I finally did, because it's a really amusing and chaotic movie, with a fairly decent "everyone's special" message that I think works fairly well. More or less. Of course, it also has a fun song, "Everything Is Awesome," by Tegan and Sara (which I downloaded years before I actually saw the movie).

So... it's set in a CGI universe where everything is made of Legos. There's a villain called Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell), who steals a super weapon called the "Kragle" from a wizard named Vitruvius, who tells him of a prophecy about something called the "Piece of Resistance," which would be found by a chosen one called "The Special," who would use it to put a stop to Lord Business's plan.

The movie then flashes forward eight and a half years. There's a construction worker named Emmet Brickowski, who has no friends, despite his deep desire to be part of a group. But there's really nothing that makes him special, and he apparently has no original ideas of his own. Then one night after work, he sees someone snooping around the construction site who shouldn't be there. It turns out to be a totally badass woman named Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), whom Emmet instantly crushes on. And she leaves, but then Emmet stumbles into the area she was looking around, and finds the Piece of Resistance, which becomes stuck to his back. He experiences a vision, then blacks out. When he wakes up, he's been taken into custody by Bad Cop/Good Cop, a single person with two faces and personalities (but most of the time he's just Bad Cop). He turns out to work for President Business, who is actually Lord Business, who is planning to destroy the world with the Kragle in a few days. Anyway, Wyldstyle rescues Emmet, whom she believes to be the Special. She's disappointed when she eventually realizes how un-special he is. Nevertheless, he has the Piece, so she takes him to meet Vitruvius, who wants to take them to Cloud Cuckoo Land, where the Master Builders are assembled. They get some help from Batman (Will Arnett), who turns out to be Wyldstyle's boyfriend (though he's too aloof and brooding to be a particularly good one). Once they get to Cloud Cuckoo Land, they meet someone called Princess Unikitty (Alison Brie), a perpetually cheerful cat-unicorn. They also meet a bunch of Master Builders, who are very interesting assorted bunch, but most of them aren't really important to the story. The only really important ones are a pirate named MetalBeard (Nick Offerman), and a 1980s astronaut named Benny.

And... I'm not sure how much else I want to reveal. There is eventually a scene that is totally different from the rest of the movie, which easily could have been sort of a cheap gimmick that just distracted from or even totally ruined the rest of the movie, but actually I thought it worked pretty well. Instead of destroying the movie's main level, it made the movie work on two levels. Anyway, of course the good guys win in the end, and everything works out pretty well... while also setting up a potential sequel.

Well, there have been a couple of spin-offs: The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie. There's also a TV series called "Unikitty!" which I haven't been able to see. And a direct sequel to the first movie came out in 2019.


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