It took five years to make a sequel to “The LEGO Movie,” but that apparently wasn’t enough time to come with anything more original. This is basically a rehash of the smash animated flick based on the ubiquitous building toys, which most parents are convinced are secretly designed to cause maximum pain when stepped on.
Emmet (voice of Chris Pratt), the everyman hero from the first movie, finds himself shunted aside after his cheery savior shtick has worn thin. The world has become very apocalypse-y in the years since, with daily attacks by brightly-colored aliens.
As you may recall, the toys are living out their lives at the direction of real-world human kids, in this case a brother and sister whose animosity gets played out in the toy realm.
Transported to the aliens’ world, Pratt and his crew --Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks), Unikitty (Alison Brie), MetalBeard (Nick Offerman) and Benny (Charlie Day) -- find themselves faced with a proposed alliance. Specifically, their leader, Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) wants to put a ring on it with the earthlings’ brooding Batman (Will Arnett).
Face-paced to the point of incoherence, “The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part” is made strictly for the kids.
Bonus features are quite good. They include a commentary track by the filmmakers, a sing-along version that includes trivia and games, a music video for the song “Super Cool,” deleted scenes and outtakes, plus several making-of documentary shorts.
There’s a moment that arrives for each of us when we first truly feel old.
Maybe it’s flailing at some athletic endeavor that barely made you break a sweat back in the day. Or it’s a cultural disconnect, when you realize you not only don’t like the music that’s popular right now, but you can’t even name a top artist or song.
For me it was 2014’s “The Lego Movie.” My then-3-year-old found it to be wonderfully zippy, colorful and fun. Although I liked the film, I spent most of it mentally shouting, “Please slow down, this movie is going way too fast for me to follow!!”
Though it’s more palatable on subsequent viewings -- especially on video where you can pause and rewind -- the movie throws so much visual and verbal information at you at once, it can be an overwhelming experience for us past-young folks.
The sequel, “The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part,” doubles down on the blazing incomprehensibility. My son, now 8, declares it even better than the original. My eyes and brain, now five years older, had an even harder time keeping pace.
Though there are certainly some enjoyable sections and throwaway jokes aimed at adults, this is a movie strictly for the kids.
The story picks up exactly where the last left off. If you’ll recall, the LEGO figurines were acting out a version of the playtime of a human father and son, in a very “Toy Story” kind of way. Dad finally learned to let go and allow his son to mess up his elaborate LEGO sets, but since he was letting him play with the stuff it was only fair to bring in his kid sister, too.
Turns out the siblings (Jadon Sand and Brooklynn Prince) did not get along. The utopian LEGO wonderland created by the fall of Lord Business has morphed into a Mad Max-like wasteland dubbed “Apocalypseburg” in which the sullen inhabits fight off near-daily invasions by cutesy aliens courtesy of sister’s more bedazzled imagination.
Emmet (voice of Chris Pratt), the everyman hero whose quest was all about finding out whether he was special -- hint: we all are -- is now seen as hopelessly out of touch. Even his lady friend, Lucy/Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), tells him he needs to grow up and get grimmer. Batman (Will Arnett) is their new savior since he’s already sufficiently dark and brooding.
The trio and a few other key team members -- robot/pirate MetalBeard (Nick Offerman), spaceship-obsessed Benny (Charlie Day) and bipolar unicorn/feline Unikitty (Alison Brie) -- are whisked away to the Systar System where they must face off with their counterparts. But it turns out their leader, shapeshifting Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (say it out loud), voiced by Tiffany Haddish, is proposing an alliance.
Another newcomer is Rex Dangervest, a dashing adventurer also voiced by Pratt who gives Emmet advice about growing up and being more manly. The joke is that Rex is a mash-up of Pratt’s other big-screen roles as a raptor trainer, space hero and cowboy.
There are a few fun musical sequences, with a new earworm to replace the “Everything Is Awesome” song from the last movie, which also gets a somewhat moody reprise. Haddish gets her own tune, and turns out to be surprisingly more mellifluous than you’d think based on her comedy persona.
“The LEGO Movie 2” is pretty much more of the same. If you’ve seen any of the other LEGO movies you know what you’re getting, and that your kids will undoubtedly like it, and you’ll feel a little dazed after watching it. Take heart that this will be them someday.
You've got to love a spin-off where they just added one word to the title: “The LEGO Batman Movie” plucks the breakout character from the first movie and gives him his own flick, with gleeful fun for kiddies resulting.
There is a goodly helping of inside jokes for grownups, but these movies are aimed squarely at the 10-and-under set. They’re colorful, fast-paced, full of action and mildly crude humor.
Will Arnett returns as the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne, who’s a self-centered jerk trying to mask his yearning for a family to stave off his crushing loneliness. One is soon presented to him in the form of a boy ward of the state who will become Robin (Michael Cera), Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) and his own loyal butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes).
Zach Galifianakis voices the Joker, who launches a scheme to free all the villains trapped in the Phantom Zone. He’s stuck somewhere between trying to kill Batman and wanting a relationship with him. Perhaps one will lead to the other.
We get to see virtually every bad guy Batman has fought over the years in LEGO form, along with a bunch of new ones like Condiment Man. (His power his exactly what you think.) The blocky, deceivingly crude animation is slick and appealing.
“The LEGO Batman” movie is entirely a retread of the first movie, but with the pieces changed all around into different forms.
Bonus features are quite extensive, and -- in a move that’s increasingly rare -- you get the same goodies with the standard DVD version as the Blu-ray upgrade.
There’s a feature-length commentary track by director Chris McKay and his crew, deleted scenes, four new Batman animated shorts (favorite title: “Batman is Just Not That Into You”) and another short for the upcoming “LEGO Ninjago” movie. Plus, social media promos, trailers and six making-of featurettes.
Batman was the breakout character of “The Lego Movie” -- which is not bad for a guy who’s been hanging around since 1939.
He basically operated as comic relief, voiced by a mock-gravely Will Arnett in a spoof of the character’s grim persona. It worked because on some level I think most of us find Bats a bit teadious after a while. Having something like a dozen movie iterations doesn’t help.
For me, the highest point of parody was when Batman played some music he’d written, pounding thrash rock punctuated by the lyrics, “Darkness!! …No parents!!”
So now he’s got his own movie, and the challenge is to see if they can sustain a parody of a tiresome superhero without it becoming tiresome itself. The answer is: mostly.
I feel sort of ridiculous offering a story summary of the movie. Credited to five (!) writers, it’s a deliberately chaotic mashup of Batman lore, including virtually every villain he’s ever fought, plus a bunch more created on the spot.
One of them, Condiment Man, has a superpower of squirting mustard and ketchup at you. Not even powerful arcs of sauce, just limp little spurts that fall ineffectually at his feet. Maybe try not to be such a traditionalist, dude -- work some salsa or tzatziki into the mix.
Anyway, the joke is that Batman/Bruce Wayne is super arrogant and self-centered, but secretly he’s desperately lonely and in denial about it. He spends his off time loitering around the bat cave, pestered by his butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), about letting people in.
Fortunately, a group of people immediately presents itself as his potential new family, including Alfred himself, a nervous scamp of an orphan who will become Robin (Michael Cera) and Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), the new commissioner of Gotham City. She’s taking over from her dad, Jim Gordon, after graduating from “Harvard Police School.” Dear daddy just pushed the button for the bat signal whenever trouble appeared, but the new sheriff in town has some discomforting ideas about Batman sharing the limelight.
The threat comes from the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), the Batman’s old nemesis who’s feeling a bit neglected these days. Batman won’t even admit to calling Joker his arch-enemy, saying that he likes to fight lots of different people and doesn’t have any preferences. “I like to fight around,” he says, in one of many in-jokes aimed at adults.
So Joker and his gang get the idea to release all the super-villains trapped by Superman in the Phantom Zone, and soon Bats has got more on his hands than he can handle.
Directed by Chris McKay, “The Lego Batman Movie” is a stylistic clone of “The Lego Movie” – ridiculously fast-paced, lots of colorful action that the eye can’t all track, chockful of quips and comedic asides.
It’s aimed squarely at kids, but is smart and savvy enough to throw in enough to keep parents engaged, too. Compared to so many moribund animated flicks lately that couldn’t pull off that trick -- “Sing,” “Trolls” -- it almost seems like a super-power.
Not everything is awesome about “The Lego Movie” -- despite the assertion of that obsessively earworm-y song from Tegan and Sara featured in the kiddie animated flick from earlier this year. However, it is a boingy, entertaining thrill ride that is sure to keep younger children occupied for a goodly chunk of their summer vacation.
It might get old pretty quick for parents – I’ve already watched it three times with my 3½-year-old, and am ready to bring a book to our next couch time together. But this hyperactive flick isn’t made for oldsters.
Told mostly in Lego format, with the people, places and things made up of the iconic construction toys, the film follows the adventures of Emmet (spiffily voiced by Chris Pratt). A normal, generic, rather anonymous worker, he lives in a world where everyone follows the rules of their banal society.
Then he falls in with Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a member of the gang of Master Builder insurgents rebelling against the tyrannical Lord Business (Will Ferrell), who hates it when people use their imaginations rather than following the instructions that come with each Lego set.
There’s also a wise wizard (Morgan Freeman), a cop who’s both good and bad (Liam Neeson), pirate/robot Metal Beard (Nick Offerman) and Batman (Will Arnett), who’s additionally Wyldstyle’s bad-boy beau.
The animation is funky, and funny. It’s meant to look low-tech, as if everything really were made of the blocky toys. So the characters have drawn-on faces (watch out for nail polish remover!) and claw hands. Yet the computer-generated look is flashy and textured. I loved how when Emmet takes a shower, blue blocks representing water spill over his body.
Just like the song, “The Lego Movie” will grow increasingly irritating with repetition. But your kids will enjoy it the first time, and the 47th.
The movie comes with a host of video extras, including a feature-length commentary track. There are also outtakes, deleted scenes, storyboards, animations tests, making-of featurettes and spotlights on particular characters like Batman. There are even short movies made by fans using Lego blocks.
"The Lego Movie" is utterly forgettable but also undeniably fun. It's aimed straight at the single-digit age group, and is so fast-paced that older, slower minds may have trouble following all the action. But as disposable entertainment for kids, its hits its mark square-on.
If you're not aware of the franchise of Lego entertainment based on the iconic snap-together toys, then you must have had your head buried or not be a parent to young children. Often used to recreate populist favorites like Star Wars, they are near-ubiquitous in videos and gaming. Those little Lego-people with blocky bodies torsos and hook hands are the stars.
This is the first feature film featuring the yellow gang, and they've brought in a team of animation veterans with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs"), who co-wrote and -directed. They keep the movie bright, light and zany.
The set-up is rather cute: all the people live in a multi-faceted universe divided up into realms that match various Lego theme sets -- medieval, pirates, wild West, etc. All are ruled by Lord Business (voice by Will Ferrell), who likes for everything to be put together exactly according to the instructions to match the pictures on the front of the box. Any "weird stuff" is perpetually torn down and rebuilt.
Emmet (a terrific Chris Pratt) is an ordinary construction work -- so ordinary, in fact, that he's virtually indistinguishable from the crowd and doesn't have any friends. But like all the others he's been brainwashed into a life of superficial happiness, where everyone watches the same TV show ("Where Are My Pants?"), eats only at chain restaurants and sing and dance to the same omnipresent song ("Everything Is Awesome!", which actually is catchy in a supremely annoying way.)
But there is a rebellion afoot led by the Master Builders -- figures who can instantly piece together complex objects and vehicles from the various Lego pieces lying about. Emmet stumbles right into their plot and finds himself stuck to the Piece of Resistance, a nondescript block, that marks him as the Chosen One who will lead the overthrow of the tyrannical Business.
Trouble is, Emmet is such an unimaginative, vanilla type of guy that he seems to lack the basic skill set of a savior. A better choice would be Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a super-smart and talented rainbow-haired rebel who hitches on as Emmet's resentful sidekick.
Emmet is soon smitten by her, though she's in a committed relationship with her boyfriend, Batman ... yes, the Batman, deliciously voiced by Will Arnett. In this universe, anybody can appear in Lego form, so Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern also make cameos.
Rounding out the cast are Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius, an old sage and prophet; Nick Offerman as pirate/robot Metalbeard; Liam Neeson as Bad Cop/Good Cop, whose mood is determined by which way his head is turned; Uni-Kitty (Alison Brie), a cat/unicorn hybrid; and Benny, a "1980s space guy" voiced by Charlie Day.
The animation looks deceptively simplistic at first, since everything and everyone is made up of Lego parts. But the CG is actually quite detailed, and the pieces fly together so quickly it must have been a chore to animate.
"The Lego Movie" surprises with its carefree attitude and zippy antics. This won't make anyone's best-of list, but as throwaway entertainment during cinema's frigid season, it's a superb fit.
If at first glance “The Nut Job” looks like cut-rate animation aimed squarely at little kiddies, that’s because it is. This Canadian/Korean production with voices provided by recognizable B-list stars would be called an exercise in intentional mediocrity -- except it’s not good enough to be deemed run-of-the-mill.
It aims low, and hits even lower.
The set-up is decently clever: Surly Squirrel is the roguish outcast of Liberty Park, a green space in an unnamed town center in 1950s America. With winter coming on and food supplies low, he gets himself banished for his antics. He sets about on a mission to pilfer a horde of nuts from a local shop, unaware that the ersatz proprietors are planning their own heist job on the bank next door.
It’s based on a short film made by Peter Lepeniotis, who directed and co-wrote this feature film effort with Lorne Cameron.
The movie is a collection of boingy action, a few teary moments and moral-of-the-story patronizing, plus some fart jokes, a smidge of romance and a heaping helping of cute critters.
The animation looks really cutting-edge … if this were 1997. Everything has a slightly digitized look, like a photo blown up past its pixel limit, and the action isn’t very smooth, tending to seem jumpy. The character designs aren’t very detailed, though the fur on the animals isn’t bad.
The voice acting is generally far richer than the look of the film, led by Will Arnett as Surly. With his smooth-yet-raspy baritone, he gives the squirrel a scoundrel’s twinkle.
Katherine Heigl does Andie, a stalwart fellow squirrel who represents the do-gooder animals of the park, led by the benevolent-ish Raccoon (Liam Neeson). Brendan Fraser provides the voice of Grayson, who is adored as the park’s official hero figure, a title he does little to earn.
For some reason never explained, some of the creatures have names while others are just called what they are, like Raccoon and Mole (Jeff Dunham), his comically near-sighted henchman.
The humans’ chief is King (Stephen Lang), a gang leader who just got out of the slammer and wants to land one more big job before retirement. He and his crew are tunneling into the bank while Surly and Andie form a temporary alliance to tunnel their way into the nut shop.
Rounding out the cast is Maya Rudolph as Precious, the robbers’ alleged guard dog, despite being a tiny pug. After a bit of convincing, she soon throws in with Surly Co.
The storytelling is pitched straight at the kindergarten-and-down crowd, with a few quick asides thrown in to keep their parents awake.
Tune your television to the Disney Junior or Nickelodeon channels on any given evening, and you’re apt to find animated fare that’s more polished and entertaining than what you’ll see in “The Nut Job.” But it’s January, folks, so this is the sort of cheap, disposable stuff that gets tossed into theaters.
Sometimes you like where a movie starts out, but not where it ends up. Such is the case with "Despicable Me," an animated caper about a world populated by super-villains -- no heroes in sight.
Unfortunately, the film starts out snarky and clever, and slowly devolves into a retread of the Grinch story: Black-hearted baddie learns the value of love, and friendship, and little girls who adore unicorns. It's still a fun flick, more for tykes than teens.
Steve Carell voices the Russian-sounding Gru, who has a bulbous body, skinny toothpick arms and legs, and a nose that could be used as a weapon. He looks like a cross between Dr. Evil and Uncle Fester.
Gru dreams of being top dog of the criminal underworld, but so far his best caper is swiping the JumboTron from Times Square. Meanwhile, his nemesis Vector (Jason Segel) foil's Gru's plan to steal the moon by making off with the shrink ray he just stole himself. How rude!
Gru recruits three orphan girls as his unwitting accomplices, and soon finds his heart's no longer in the whole world domination thing. Now it's ballet recitals and quality time instead of building killer robots.
Maybe it's the boy in me, but I wished the movie had given the trio of girls the boot, and stuck with the wicked stuff.
Extra features, just like the movie, are geared more toward small children than general audiences.
The DVD version comes with a commentary track by directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, a featurette on the film's music, "The World of Despicable Me" and a game, Gru's Rocket Builder.
Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, and there's several more games, a 16-minute feature on the voice cast, and Gru-Control: Funny pop-up features during the movie starring Gru's yellow minions.
Best of all: Three all-new shorts starring various characters from the film. My fave: Minion Orientation Day!
I like the idea of "Despicable Me" -- an animated world in which there are super-villains but no heroes -- more than the final product. It's cute, and the under-10 crowd will doubtlessly find it a delight, what with the generous helping of adorable critters and gastrointestinal sounds.
I just wish the filmmakers could've found some less obvious territory to troll. Gru (voice by Steve Carell, doing a Slavic accent), the bald and pointy-nosed un-hero, learns there's more to life than villainy when he adopts a trio of little girls as part of his mad scheme to steal the moon.
Cue a bunch of scenes of Gru's eyes misting over as his Grinch-like heart grows three sizes while reading the tots a bedtime story, or rearranging his dastardly deeds to make their ballet recital.
I much preferred the stuff about the competitiveness between super-villains -- for instance, Gru's envy spikes when someone steals one of the Great Pyramids, when all he can boast is burgling the JumboTron from Times Square.
Or the Bank of Evil, which appropriately resides in a dark cavernous pit underneath the regular bank, and solely funds criminal enterprises. ("Formerly Lehman Brothers," a sign reads, in a zippy throwaway joke.)
I confess that when summer began and I was surveying the season's offerings, I lighted upon "Despicable Me" as one of the most promising, and now I'm disappointed with it. It's like waiting months for that special toy you wanted so badly, and then you open it up Christmas Day and it's not nearly as much fun as you thought it'd be.
It's not a bad toy, but maybe some other kid would enjoy it more.
But the first rule of film criticism is that we shouldn't criticize a movie for what it is not, but what it is. So if I throw my expectations for something snarkier out the window, I deem "Despicable Me" a moderately entertaining tumble.
Personally, I'd rather take in "Toy Story 3" in for a third time than this one once, but that's me.
The story opens with the prospect of Gru being put out to pasture for a younger generation of villains. The Bank is hesitant to front the money for his moon-stealing caper because an upstart has stolen the shrink ray that Gru himself had just lifted, with which he intended to downscale the lunar body.
What profit or purpose there is in a basketball-sized moon I don't know, though I admit I enjoyed the gag where a werewolf turns back into a human when it gets shrunk.
Gru's nemesis is Vector (Jason Segal), who resembles a young Bill Gates but whose fortress and other hardware all have an antiseptic Apple look to them. (iLair?)
Vector nabs the shrink ray, and soon after places a large cookie order from a trio of cute orphans: Margo, Agnes and Edith (Miranda Cosgrove, Elsie Fisher and Dana Gaier, respectively). Gru plots to adopt the girls and replace their Coconutties with cookie-shaped robots when they make delivery.
The girls don't really have distinctive personalities beyond yearning to be wanted, though Edith, the youngest, has a passion for unicorns that borders on psychoses. ("He's so fluffy I'm gonna die!!")
The CG animation is sleek, but the 3-D is take it or leave it. Directors Pierre Coffin -- which is a great name for a super-villain, by the way -- and Chris Renaud are both new to feature films, and seem to have more flair for the action sequences than the mushy stuff: Gru's complicated relationship with his emotionally absent mother (Julie Andrews) is under-explored territory.
Oh, and Gru has a grumpy old assistant (Russell Brand) and an army of little yellow minions who bear more than a passing resemblance to the aliens from the "Toy Story" movies ... hey, did I mention that "Toy Story 3" is probably playing in the very next cinema?
It's hard to play nice with a movie like "G-Force." Yes, I know films like this are designed for audiences that are only a small fraction of my age. It features cute computer-generated critters who act out, dance to hip-hop music and engage in noisome bodily functions that are eternally delightful to those who measure their years in single digits.
But is it too much to ask for a kiddie flick that's at least passably endurable for parents and other grown-ups? I know not every children's movie can be "Finding Nemo," but is "The Rescuers Down Under" too high to aim?
"G-Force" is about a group of guinea pigs who are trained as secret agents for the government. Oh, there's also a mole who hangs out underground and handles the computers.
The rodents' voices are done by Tracy Morgan, Penelope Cruz, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi and Jon Favreau, so you know exactly what kind of character each is doing. Morgan does an Ebonix-spewing dude named Blaster; Cruz is the saucy Latina Juarez; Rockwell is the heroic team leader Darwin; Buscemi is a nervous guinea pig accused of ferret ancestry; and Favreau is the chubby non-spy pig with delusions of awesomeness.
The actors appear to have recorded their scripted lines, and then spent some studio time reeling off non-sequitar exclamations that are then animated into the action scenes. So you'll see CG guinea pigs flying through the air or running from explosions, and they'll say something that doesn't even fit the moment.
Anyway, the plot: A scheming industrialist (Bill Nighy) has cooked up some plan named Clusterstorm that will activate the computer chips he has secretly embedded in his vast array of consumer electronics. They set a 30-hour countdown, at which point he will activate the plot and all the gizmos will do something ... well, we don't know what, but really nasty.
Problem: After at least a dozen references to the ever-dwindling time count, Nighy finally sets things in motion by pushing a button. At one point he even shows off the button he's going to press. Question: If you have a button that can do what you want right now, why do you need a countdown? Why wouldn't you just push the button immediately?
I should mention that the human leader of G-Force is played by Zach Galifianakis, who played the man-child in this summer's biggest sleeper hit, the raunchfest "The Hangover." I can only hope there's no crossover audience.
