First Take- The Lego Movie: instructions/review required for further assembly

SYNOPSIS: An ordinary LEGO construction worker, thought to be the prophesied as “special”, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the LEGO universe into eternal stasis.

Sometimes, you have to go low key and review the kids films- and yes, while this sort of thing has been done on YouTube lots of times by fans, the obligatory ‘toy-to-film’ adaptation for Lego is just pure brilliance, and that’s all thanks to the duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller.

Lord and Miller take the skills they’ve learned on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street and a variety of projects and apply it successfully to another animated film- their writing and direction is on form as ever, and with some almighty pacing alongside humour for all ages, it feels like these two were born to direct this film, and with some fantastic animation alongside a score from frequent collaborator Mark Mothersbaugh, the titular song from the film is very much applicable.

The voice cast are just as brilliant, and leading that cast is Chris Pratt, a man who is becoming one of Hollywood’s most in demand talents right now for very good reason- he has a sense of comic timing that works with any film, making all those years on Parks and Recreation feel worth it. Supporting him is a stacked list of talents, which include Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Alison Brie, the 21 Jump Street team of Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill and Dave Franco, and many others.

THE VERDICT

Everything quite simply is awesome in this film, it’s the adaptation we all thought would never work, but my god, it just feels so damn good. Audiences both young and old are going to really love The Lego Movie.

RATING- 5/5