The Lego Movie

Some of the characters from the new Lego movie, Lego, as reported by the New York Times, http://www.optimist.org/e/member/scholarships4.cfm, fair use claimed

Greetings All:

Friday, we saw the new Lego movie.  It was great.  I had not heard much about it and was glad that I did not.  It made for an even better experience for me.  Now, with that said...

SPOILER ALERT!!!  I'm going to talk about the movie.  Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, here's my take on it.  Like many of the genre of kid-centric movies, there are subtle and not so subtle adult themes.  In this movie, the antagonist, President Business, runs the Lego world and wants everything to be in its proper place all the time.  As the movie went on, I found myself laughing to myself as I am an unapologetic "neat freak."  It's a rare day I leave work that I do have my desk clean.  If I have a project to finish, I put it on my chair, then push it into my desk.  I have two conference chairs and I slide them all the way in at the end of the day.  Yeah, I'm one of those...

Back to the movie, the plot is basically the following:  The main character is a Lego figure living in a Lego world who does not realize that he is about to become the savior of the (Lego) world.  Through a series of twists and turns, he does, but not before the one and only Will Ferrell makes an appearance.  I had missed the poster on the way into the theater that he was in the movie and was glad I did.  His on-screen entrance out of the animated part made for an additional great part of the movie, the pizza on the crust if you will.  One of the morals of the story is that don't be buttoned down and just assume something MUST be a certain way.  Oh, and I particularly liked how the average guy gets the girl from Batman. :).

The heroes of the movie, the "Master Builders," including, but not limited to Gandalf and Shaq, were able to take things, the basic building blocks of Legos, and make amazing things.  This drove President Business nuts!  He likes order and structure, kinda like the guy who keeps his desk spotless.  The good guys prevail when they out-create the "Man Upstairs:"

The "Man Upstairs" turns out to be none other than "Anchorman" Will Ferrell himself.  I loved him in Anchorman, Old School and even Bewitched.  In this movie, he showed a degree of acting depth that I have not seen in a while.  He's not going to win an Oscar for it, but still, he made an already good movie better.  I also think (and hope) he had a LOT of fun making this movie.

On the way back from the movie, we stopped at Target (a store) to buy a birthday present for our neighbor.  In the toy aisle, I looked to see what the Lego section had.  It had numerous kits, including a most excellent Star Wars one of the Millennium Falcon for like $130.00.  Here's the link to it if you want to buy it,...for your kid of course and not you-  http://www.walmart.com/ip/LEGO-Star-Wars-Millennium-Falcon/16672557

Awesome stuff, without a doubt,  Still, I was surprised and a bit disappointed that there were no "free play" Lego sets.  For all of the movie's message of build and be creative, at Target at least, your creativity is limited, or at least highly guided to a specific kit.

I recall as a kid having sets of Legos that where just a bunch of different Legos.  Now, they are all kits.

The basic "building block" of the Lego world (I know, that was a bad pun), permission reasonably presumed granted by Legos website/fair use claimed, source- http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/news-room/media-assets-library/images

I could not help but see the irony in the movie about the way they celebrate the creativity of the Master Builders and their ability to make something from a loose collection of blocks and then the inability to buy such a set for your kids.  I guess there are limits to reality.

In any event, it was a great movie and highly recommend seeing it, even if you're without young kids.

Here's a link to the movie's site:  http://www.thelegomovie.com/index.php

Be well my friends,
Jeno