Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

So after the immensely unsettling and intense ride that Hotel Mumbai was, I needed a pallet cleanser... bad! Lego Movie 2 seemed like the obvious choice because good lord what a contrast. 

The Lego Movie itself was a bit of a surprise. Nobody thought that a movie essentially with the sole purpose of promoting a toy would make so much money and would be so appealing to both kids and adults. I think it was the first Lego Movie and 21 Jumpstreet that really introduced the world to Lord and Miller and with how entertaining the Lego Batman spinoff movie was, I think this movie had a lot of expectations to it.

The Lego Movie 2 is essentially a direct sequel to the first film, almost starting exactly where the last

film left off. In the real world, the father of this kid playing with Legos where this entire world is formed from tells him that since he lets his son play with his Lego city, he has to let his sister do it and there is a bit of a sister invasion that happens in this boys world (In case you forgot, the dad is played by Will Ferrell and the kid is played by Jadon Sand).

But the real story happens within that world as it goes from a sprawling metropolis to a post-apocalyptic brooding world. All the characters from the first film, Lucy, Batman, UniKitty, Metalbeard, and Benny, the space ship Lego Man (voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Allison Brie, Nick Offerman, and Charlie Day respectively), have become grizzled war torn versions of themselves. Everyone that is except the main character Emmit (voiced again by Chris Pratt).

Emmit continues to just be a happy go lucky guy hoping he can just live happily with his friends. This makes him a bit of a lovable outcast as everyone likes him, but nobody believes he's a leader or even really useful.

But then when Emmit's friends are abducted by an invading force that, most people will deduce is the sister playing with both Legos as well as younger versions like Duplos, Emmit must go on a journey to the Systar System (get it, like Sister system!) to save his friends. With the help of a dashing hero named Rex Dangervest (also voiced by Pratt), Emmitt must stop the plot of Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Get it! Like Whatever I wanna be?!?) (voiced by Tiffany Haddish) from destroying their Lego world from a particularly familiar apocalypse.

So I'm a little torn with this movie because on one hand, the writing is both very clever and heart warming again. While Lord and Miller didn't direct this time, they wrote the screenplay and it still has that dual feeling to it where there's an animated story that the Lego characters are going on, but it uniquely coincides with the story going on in the real world.

Some of it is subtle, for example, the kid is older and that accounts for the darker grittier interests in his Lego Adventures. Some of it is less subtle like in the way the world the Legos live in is named. It takes similar steps the first film did in giving silly pronunciations to something like Crazy Glue in order to make it fit in their fantastical world as if it was coming from the mind of a kid.

However, there is an odd feeling with this film as opposed to the first one and I'd say even the Batman spinoff. The first one was for sure a movie for kids, but I think the humor felt newer and a little more inclusive of adults than the sequel does. The sequel feels a lot more like a kids movie than the first one did and I apologize but I can't really put my finger on why. It might be because it is incorporating the imagination and mind of the little sister at this point, and while it has clever moments, it just feels more regressive than the first film did.

I also find it curious that the movie suddenly decided that it needed to be a semi-musical for very little reason.

The first film had the song "Everything is Awesome". It's a fun song. It's a tune kids will enjoy but adults can kind of laugh at. The new "Everything is Awesome" becomes the "Catchy Song" and while its a fun song and really well utilized in terms of the story, it loses some of its impact when you figure out that they have a couple of other songs they're trying to make the new "Everything is Awesome", or just have for the sake of having this be a more musical based movie, which just seems like an odd choice for me.

For example, I'm not totally sure why, but Tiffany Haddish got two songs in the middle of the movie when adding quippy dialogue on how she says she's a good guy but double speaks to make it seem like she's not.

Maybe Haddish had some kind of contract that said she got an extra song, but it just didn't really do anything for me and not only did a not connect with that character as much as I did with the characters from the first movie, those characters I connected with before get relegated to a very small role in order to introduce more characters. Metal Beard, UniKitty, Benny, and even Batman to a certain extent really get reduced roles and those were kind of the heart and soul comedy of the first movie.

That might be the best explanation to why this movie didn't do it as much for me as the first one did. I still think its clever, the cast is still really good, and I by no means am done with Lego Movies. Its pretty millennial of me to be complaining about a kids movie not really speaking to me as a man in my mid 20s. I just wish there was a little bit more of a balance like there was in the first movie.

I still chuckled quite a bit during this movie, but I'm glad that I didn't have to spend money to see it. If you watch it, I think you're going to enjoy yourself, just make sure you keep your expectations reasonable.

But those are my thoughts on the Lego Movie 2. What did you think? How does it compare to the first one and the Lego Batman movie? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!