The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

Dir: Mike Mitchell

2019

**

I think the fact that Warner Animation Group and Warner Bros. Pictures had confirmed that The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part would be the fourth and final film in The Lego Movie franchise ( following the release of the first film's two spin-offs, The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie) is a clear indicator that this was an idea that had run its course. This was a refreshing move considering the films make a ton of money, and it was a rare but welcome bit of integrity in the world of franchise/big business etc. ‘Go out in style’ and ‘Quit while you’re ahead’ are two solid ideas, the only problem here being that the film isn’t very good. In fact, it’s actually rather dull. The magic of the first film was in its charm. It understood how kids played with LEGO and ignored how LEGO wanted kids to play with it. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is just a mindless tirade of blurred action scenes and convoluted sub-plots that stumble through ideas of childhood, empathy, regret and much of what people had forgotten about the first film. I found Emmet to be fun, funny and charming in the first film, here he is as annoying as the other characters found him in the original. The songs are dreadfully lethargic and depend largely on the popular tunes of the first film. The contrast between this and the original are much like the difference between The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie, that is, one is for everyone and the other is for the brain-dead and children who will literally watch anything. The film grossed over $191 million worldwide against a budget of $99 million, somehow making it a box office failure, something I still don’t quite understand, but those numbers should have been way higher. I think people enjoyed the first but the novelty of such an idea was always going to have a limited shelf-life. I do believe The Lego Ninjago Movie helped kill off the enthusiasm. I think what confused me most about the film is how it tells its audience the basis of the story and then tries to reveal it as a surprise twist at the end. Following the events of the first film, Finn's sister Bianca has been invited to share their father's LEGO collection. In the LEGO universe, this is represented by the arrival of Duplo aliens. Emmet builds the aliens a heart as a token of friendship but one eats it and playfully demands more. Lucy and the Master Builders interprets this as an attack and retaliates, and the ensuing battle destroys Bricksburg. Despite all this, Emmet tries to assure Lucy that "Everything can still be awesome." Five years later, Bianca has taken more of Finn's LEGO creations and other toys to play with. In the LEGO universe, the Duplo army's invasions have turned Bricksburg into the post-apocalyptic wasteland Apocalypseburg, hardening its citizens. However, Emmet remains upbeat and wants to move into a dream home with Lucy, who tells Emmet he needs to adapt to their new harsher world. Emmet himself is also troubled by visions of an impending cataclysm dubbed as "Armamageddon". Soon, a LEGO mini-doll named General Mayhem arrives and proclaims that Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi of the Systar (sister) System wants to marry Apocalypseburg’s leader. Mayhem's forces capture Batman, Lucy, Benny, MetalBeard, and Unikitty after they argued who was the leader. They are taken to the Systar System, where Batman eventually agrees to marry Wa'Nabi, while the others are being tempted to remain, which only Lucy resists. In pursuit, Emmet converts his house into a spaceship and travels through "the Stairgate" – out of the basement – and is saved from an asteroid field by rugged adventurer Rex Dangervest. Emmet begins to toughen up by mimicking Rex, hoping to impress Lucy. Meanwhile Lucy and her friends are taken to a spa and while seeing them being "brainwashed", she escapes to find Emmet. Meanwhile, Rex and Emmet evade Wa'Nabi's forces and find Lucy. Deducing that the wedding is a front for Armamageddon, Emmet devises a rescue plan where Lucy will switch off the music defending the Space Temple where the wedding will take place, and Emmet will destroy the reception cake, encased in a temple, to stop the wedding. As Lucy fights Mayhem, she learns the Systar System never meant to antagonize Apocalypseburg, but merely failed to communicate their desire to coexist in peace – in the real world, Bianca simply wants her older brother Finn to play with her. They also hope that the wedding to bring about peace. She also discovers that Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi's original form is the heart Emmet gave the aliens. Realizing Rex has sinister motives, Lucy tries to stop Emmet and show who she really is, but Emmet doesn’t believe her and destroys the temple. In the real world, Emmet's destruction is carried out by Finn angrily destroying Bianca's LEGO temple wedding cake. Emmet realises his mistake but is seized by Rex, knocking Lucy onto a shelf. Aboard his ship, Rex reveals that he is an embittered version of Emmet from the future; abandoned for years underneath a nearby clothes dryer after crashing in the asteroid field, he became Rex – "Radical Emmet Xtreme" – and built a remote time machine to save Emmet/himself. As revenge for being neglected while the other toys were played with, Rex has tricked his past self into bringing about Armamageddon. When asked what Armamageddon really is, Rex explains what is happening in the real world right now, that is that Bianca and Finn’s mother has halted their bickering and has asked them to put away their LEGO sets, representing Armamageddon (as in just wait until "Our momma gets in"). Rex then throws Emmet under the dryer where he had been abandoned to make him become himself after Emmet refuses to give up on his friends. Everything in the LEGO universe begins to crumble and fall into the dark hole of the Bin of Storajj, represented by Finn and Bianca taking their creations apart and putting them in storage bins. Being unable to accept that this is the end, Lucy urges everyone to sing "Everything's Not Awesome", which Finn hears and then rebuilds the heart for Bianca, thus reviving Wa-Nabi and inadvertently restores the LEGO universe, allowing Lucy to rally the others into escaping from the storage bin in various spacecraft to save Emmet and stop Rex. Emmet and Lucy overpower Rex and sabotage his time machine with a heart bomb. Rex redeems himself as he and his timeline fade from existence when Emmet refuses to be like him, and Emmet and Lucy reconcile. In the real world, Finn and Bianca's mom has a change of heart upon seeing them reconciled and watches them play with their LEGO creations together. The LEGO universe is transformed into a mishmash of the restored Bricksburg and the Systar System called the peaceful "Syspocalypstar". Emmet's dream house is rebuilt and gets an original album of "Everything Is Awesome", revealing Lucy on the album, much to his surprise. Now, as nice as the story is of a young pair of siblings playing nicely together, I can’t help but think that many of the ‘toy’ themes have been covered, and covered better, by the Toy Story films. It’s clever, but far too confused for the heart of the story to be appreciated fully. It gave me a bloody headache. I look forward to not watching another LEGO film and not watching another Chris Pratt film for a while.

Trolls

Dir: Walt Dohrn, Mike Mitchell

2016

***

I remember when Trolls had a second wind in the 1990s, although technically it was their fifth wind, having enjoyed bubbles of popularity since their 1959 invention. I understood the appeal and still think the origins of the toy to be rather special. Back in 1959, Danish Fisherman Thomas Dam had no money to buy his daughter a Christmas present, so he carved a wooden Troll doll for her. The local children were so envious of the doll that Dam soon found himself running his own doll factory under the brilliant company name of Dam Things. I had one at school, you had to, it was the law of the playground for around five minutes or so and the law of the playground has to be upheld or ridicule would be fierce and forthcoming. They're not something I have warm nostalgic feelings for, and a film adaptation (as it were) was not something I had an enthusiasm for. For me, Trolls The Movie was just another example of the demise of creativity in the word of cinema and it is. It's a toy commercial, not a new concept, pretty much every cartoon I enjoyed as a child was made as a way to sell a toy but I can't help but feel more effort was put into them, I see them as somehow superior, when in all honesty they really weren't. Anyway, I stayed with family one weekend and after my two lovely nieces woke me at some ungodly hour I agreed to sit and watch Trolls with them. It was either that or another tea party with Barbie and Ken, but I was overruled, we watched Trolls instead and to my amazement I didn't hate it. Putting aside the fact that I enjoy every minute spent with my nieces, the film was very funny. I found myself laughing at all of the same jokes that they laughed at because it tapped into that one thing that kids and adults both love: silliness. So many kid's animations these days are far too serious, they either have a lazy plot involving a popstars/X-factor style audition or involve rather adult themes of love, marriage and problems with in-laws. So a film whereby the lead characters fart glitter and poop cupcakes appealed to me greatly. I wouldn't say the Trolls of the film where particularly reminiscent of the toys I grew up with but I can only say that this is a good thing. I hope they do sell lots of toys based on this film, they deserve to. It's not particularly preachy but there is a good message in the end. I liked the detail, how the Trolls and other animals were clearly made of suede and I liked that they used known songs. I would usually argue that using existing and popular songs was lazy, in many respects it is, but it helps the film along greatly, you can get into it right away and with so many doubts surrounding the film it probably had no choice. I thought the voice cast were really good too, Anna Kendrick has the right voice and can sing, Justine Timberlake is proving himself to be quite the voice artist and I'm amazed I have found a film that features Russell Brand, James Corden and Zooey Deschanel that I didn't hate. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is instantly recognizable and Christine Baranski's character even looks like her. John Cleese and Jeffrey Tambor are both lovely in their supporting roles. The plot is right out of Fraggle Rock, although much of that was from folktales anyway but I saw a lot of Jim Henson in the characters and humour, which I really liked. Sometimes when a film borrows enough from others it works, Trolls isn't original but it gets away with it and this is because it provides its own silliness. Never overlook the power of silly!

Surviving Christmas
Dir: Mike Mitchell
2004
*
Mike Mitchell's festive stinker Surviving Christmas is nothing short of awful. When picking a film I guess the actor has to first read the script and then read the pay cheque. I can only imagine that in this instance the pay cheque made more sense than the script. It is truly awful, one of the season's worst and that's saying something for a Christmas film. It makes absolutely no sense what so ever, isn't funny and doesn't even have a cheesy moral. It was released a year after being made as the producers didn't want it to clash with Ben Affleck's 2003 hit (ahem) film Paycheck. It was pushed back to an Oct 2004 release, which to be fair is a little bit early and when absolutely no one went to see it they rushed through the DVD release for December. That probably tells you all you need to know about the film, because when the producers are happy to rush out a movie in order to bury it you know it's crap. Avoid.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

Dir: Paul Tibbitt, Mike Mitchell

2015

***

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is SpongeBob Squarepants second feature film and an indication that unlike many a cartoon from the late 90s, he's still as popular today as he was when he first hit our television screens. There is something considerably comforting about the durability of silliness and SpongeBob Squarepants is the epitome of silly. A typical TV episode of the cartoon lasts for approx twenty minutes and can be rather exhausting I find. I found the prospect of sitting through 90 minutes of SpongeBob to be quite daunting, even though I enjoy his humour. I'm sure I wasn't alone either and it's clear that Paul Tibbitt and Mike Mitchell realized that three back-to-back episodes would have been too much for any audience. Instead, you can clearly see three chapters in the structure of the film with live performances involving Antonio Banderas and a few seagulls breaking them up and supplying the film with its introduction. The first chapter is a standard twenty minute episode that starts the story with a simple (but very silly) scenario. The second chapter is an experimental time-travel psychedelic trip involving a mix of animation styles and the final chapter is the big pay off, involving SpongeBob and his friends becoming 'real' and entering the world (land) as we know it. It becomes almost impossible to follow the story as it goes at breakneck speed, becoming more and more surreal as it speeds up. However, it never really seems to matter. Highlights include; the best visual example of a sugar rush I have ever seen, Antonio Banderas as an unstoppable fast food pirate, beautiful 3D animation and the brilliant Matt Berry as a Cosmic Dolphin. It's very funny but you may need a lie down after (or half way through in my case). Easily the most original film of 2015.

Sky High
Dir: Mike Mitchell
2005
***
Anyone who thinks Sky High is the worst superhero film ever should watch Zoom. You'll probably change your mind pretty quickly. I thought it was actually very good. They understood the genre and played with it rather well I thought. Put in the likes of Bruce Campbell and Lynda Carter and you're on to a winner in my book. Good stuff!