Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Everything becomes awesome when there’s a new Lego Movie!

Lego Movie 2 picks up immediately after the end of the first outing of Emmet, Wildstyle and friends as they are forced to battle hordes from the planet Duplo. Years later, the constant brick-on-brick warring has left the world of Lego in a dystopian state. Wildstyle and the rest of Emmet’s friends are all kidnapped by an emissary of the Sistar system and Emmet has to go get them back.

1980-something Space Guy, Benny, is loving being a passenger in a SPACESHIP!

The Lego Movies are excuses to sell toys. They are enormous adverts designed in a laboratory to convince children to scream at their parents to buy an overpriced piece of plastic manufactured in a sweat shop to line the pockets of the incredibly wealthy people at the top of Lego.

In spite of this, I have to concede that they are darn fine films.

The first Lego Movie was a delightful, funny and original piece (pardon the pun). Everytime it’s on TV I have to watch it to the end and for the next few days “Everything Is Awesome” is stuck in my head.

What followed was a spin-off film following that film’s brilliant version of Batman portrayed by the incredible voice of Will Arnett. That movie had a bit of Act Three blues and didn’t reach the heights of thematic weight that the original film had but was still pretty entertaining.

I will admit to having missed the Lego Ninjago movie. I’m sure it was fine…

Now it’s time for the first true sequel to the Lego Movie to compare itself to its lofty history.

Lego Movie 2’s main story is the conflict between the boy who played with the toys in the first film against his little sister. This is portrayed in the Lego world as a war between the characters from the first film with a bunch of new girly characters.

For the first act, I was laughing or smiling pretty much constantly. Then second act blues hit and my attention began to drift away and while I can say that overall, this is an entertaining film with some cool ideas at times, it does not hit the heights of the first movie.

There was one little niggle that kept me from fully appreciating this film. It was way too meta.

By their very nature these films have been meta, but there was always a sweet spot were things didn’t become too referential. At some point, Lego Movie 2 decided to just start calling out the fact that it’s a film and that the characters all know how this world works and then the script wouldn’t stop trying to be superficially clever by referencing something.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are very talented filmmakers. They took a back seat for this project, choosing to write, but not direct. The filmmaker they did get did a very fine job. It’s just a shame that the material he had to work with was not of the perfectly balanced calibre the Lego Movies have peaked at.

I look forward to what happens with this franchise, it has so far delivered fun, engaging and smart films. Here’s hoping the next one doesn’t get too clever again.

Recommended Scenario: If you love the first Lego Movie, you’ll at least like this one.