The LEGO Movie 2 (2019) - Movie Review

After a quite fantastic solo spin-off (and a rather disappointing secondary spin-off), the LEGO movie franchise is back to its main series. Knowing how much fire the first film caught on release, and is still catching on and off five years later, expectations are quite high that this is going to not only match up to what audiences loved about the original, but also a reassurance that the fumble that was Ninjago was just a one-off incident. I once again find myself in a position where I’m not entirely sure what to expect from this film, much like how I went into the first movie. Also once again, having seen the movie, this feels like exactly what this film should be, both on its own and as a continuation to what has become one of the greatest films of the 2010’s.

Do I even need to get into the animation on this one? It’s Aussie studio Animal Logic back at their click-clacking plastic game, with all the minor touches intact to make every LEGO brick feel that much more real. The very tactile aesthetic that has marked this franchise from the start gives a certain child-like delight to the scenery and the action beats, as if what we are seeing came straight out of the imagination of a kid at play. It tributes what made LEGO a household name in the first place, and it also helps iron out the one real complaint I had about the original (the jump into live-action during the third act). As I’ll get into, that very jump turns out to be incredibly important for how this film plays out.

Then there’s the soundtrack. If you aren’t already humming Everything Is Awesome, then be prepared for even more earworm material because this film is also a pseudo-musical, given how much the soundtrack plays into the main narrative. Songs like the amazingly redundant Catchy Song and Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi’s entrance song Not Evil work on the same bluntly ironic level as Everything Is Awesome, only the irritation, catchiness and bluntness has been dialled all the way up… and then even further until it stop being just music and becomes a kind of sonic warfare. Or, to put it simply, they’re all memes. And it is glorious.

Glorious and exceptionally funny, which brings us to the sense of humour on display. It mainly sticks to the need to take the piss out of the typical action movie plot like the first one did, only here, that piss-taking has extended beyond and into the characters we’ve already become accustomed to. Case in point, the introduction of Rex Dangervest, the ally and kinda-sorta mentor of returning lead Emmet, who is basically a send-up of every live-action role Chris Pratt has ever done. It’s quite astonishing how much ground the writing covers for a single actor’s career, but given certain… things that happened earlier this year involving Pratt, it’s a good thing that he’s able to laugh at himself this efficiently.

Not that the examination is purely for the lols, and it’s here where the film starts entering the realms of genius-level storytelling. Let’s start with some of the side characters first, though, as Emmet is where everything in the film begins to come together. For a start, Batman finds himself back in prime form as the gravelly-voiced loner/self-parody, but with the turns his character takes here (which involve a combination of marriage and somehow looking even more fabulous than Joel Schumacher could ever accomplish), it works as a surprisingly worthy continuation of the ‘not every hero has to work alone’ theming of the LEGO Batman Movie.

From there, we have Wyldstyle, who starts the whole film off on a note of endearing self-seriousness that is, as the film goes on, will be mocked, dissected and ultimately reconciled in a feat of writing that makes even the first film look basic by comparison. Yeah, this doesn’t go for anything as recognised as the traditional three-act story structure (which the first film did a brilliant job of sending up), but the core ideas here are no less heady or vital to comprehend. This is where Emmet comes into the picture, with the film as a whole serving as his coming-of-age story.

After Brickopolis has been razed by the forces of Duplo (which could only be topped by the villains turning out to be Mega Bloks for accurate ribbing), it basically turns into Mad Max: Fury Road. As a result, everyone in the city has become grimmer, grittier, and a reflection of how grim and overly gritty modern blockbuster cinema has become. Except for Emmet, who is still as happy-go-lucky and naïve as ever, with Wyldstyle and the others wanting him to "grow up" and stop being so childish.

Bit of a weird observation, the idea that not being cold and hardened against the world is only something a child does, but that very contradiction is part of the film’s point: Growing up shouldn’t have to require that kind of transformation. Naturally, growing up and leaving childhood behind involves a lot of major and frequently hard decisions on who you want to become… but it doesn’t mean that compassion and capacity for friendship should be abandoned in the process. It’s a quite mature look at the typical coming-of-age story, and when it gets into the effects beyond the world of LEGO, things get weird.

I was way too harsh on how the first film ended. That jump into live-action wound up serving the story far more than I originally perceived, as that connection from the characters in the LEGO universe to the humans who play with and create that universe gives the story real-world urgency. It actually solidified the original film’s main point, and it is a simple but no less brilliant point: Learning to be like the name of the toy system and play well. With this follow-up, we get a continuation of that notion: Learning to play well with others.

While the writing interjects a lot of sibling rivalry terminology into the main action of an intergalactic conflict (a decent game for the adults in the audience is taking a shot every time a character says "You started it"), that focus on being able to play well with others combines with Emmet’s character arc to make for some remarkably noble intentions. I mean, if you want people to be more open to trusting and working with others, what better place to start than helping them learn to play with others when they’re young.

That’s what I mean as far as this being the ideal continuation of the first film. Not only does it maintain the animation, humour and acting standard of the original, it builds (heh) on the themes of play to emphasise the importance of working together. This is the kind of message in a mainstream production that will never go out of style, but when it’s delivered this well, it makes for an amazing family film where both kids and adults will get something out of it.