There's one important category missing from all the film awards ceremonies this month: The Most Libertarian Film of the Year. And the winner this year is without a shadow of a doubt The Lego Movie. Setting hilarity and great animation aside (and it has boxes of those), The Lego Movie shows us a compelling dystopian world of conformity, regulation and authority where everyone "must follow the instructions" or be "put to sleep". It is a tale of the battle between the chaotic, creative destruction of freedom, and the rigid, forceful regulation of bureaucracy. The run-of-the-mill protagonist Emmet is blatantly shown to be brainwashed by repetitive and generic tv shows, corporatist celebration days like Taco Tuesdays, and a perpetually playing propaganda anthem called "Everything is Awesome" with clearly collectivist undertones: "everything is cool when you're part of a team". He works with other construction workers to tear down the "weird" and diverse buildings and replace them with generic ones.
But it gets so much better. The dystopian dictator's position as both the CEO of the Octan Corporation and President of the World perfectly encapsulates the problems with corporatism and monopolies on force. Indeed, his evil plan is stultifying regulation taken to the extreme: he wants to use superglue to literally stick everything permanently into the "perfect" position, relying on a robotic army of "micro-managers" to make sure that everything is exactly how he wants it to be before being stuck into place. There could be no clearer metaphor for the perils of intruding technocrats. The evil Lord President Business wishes to destroy the chaos of innovation, hunting down and killing or imprisoning all the talented and resourceful master builders, and even erecting closely guarded borders between the different worlds in order to prevent the free movement of minifigures and their mixing of cultures into more interesting and diverse configurations. At the same time, the resistance's enclave, Cloud Cuckoo Land is an anarchist utopia.
As the UniKitty tells the heroes, "There is no government, no bedtime, no baby-sitters", though others have suggested this is also a subtle critique of the slightly creepy anti-freedom parts of modern tolerance culture: "Any idea is a good idea ...Except the not-happy ones." The dichotomy is later qualified when it turns out that creativity can work better when constrained within some rules that don't try to curtail it completely. You'd be challenged to find a simpler, more personal and appealing defence of the rule of law as conducive to freedom and human flourishing. Above all, however, The Lego Movie is a story about the beauty of creative destruction, and how the battle between our fearful controlling impulses and our acceptance of the uncertainty of freedom is a profoundly personal one. It is an enjoyable must-watch for fans of free markets.The Lego Movie, film review: Screenplay with traces of Orwellian satire The film has as many pop culture references as the average Tarantino movie
Thursday 13 February 2014 22:30 GMT Adults who go to The Lego Movie out of a weary sense of parental duty are in for a very pleasant surprise.The Lego characters themselves may be totally inexpressive but this is still a zany and tremendously witty affair. The screenplay has traces of Orwellian satire while throwing in sideswipes at corporate America (see video below) along with as many pop culture and film references as you would find in the The plot is some hokum about the evil President Business planning to end the world on Taco Tuesday. The only one who can save the day is a dim-witted construction worker called Emmet. The voice-work is done with great brio (especially by Liam Neeson as Bad Cop and by Morgan Freeman in Moses-mode as an old wizard), the 3D computer animation is as fluid as the Lego characters themselves are rigid, and even the live-action finale isn't quite as toe-curling as might have been anticipated.
The Lego Movie is out in cinemas across the UK from Friday 14 So What's With the Cookies? OK, if you've clicked here, I'm assuming that you want to read this review. But in the event you've clicked by mistake, there are MAJOR SPOILERS ahead. Many critics, and many of my friends, are talking about how fabulous "The Lego Movie" is. So I was a bit surprised that I found it "meh." Sure, there are some clever moments and nods to nostalgia. But the central conceit, the "big twist" that reviewers tripped all over themselves to avoid revealing, was, in my humble opinion, telegraphed pretty early on in the movie. The minute that I realized that Vitruvius was holding a half-eaten lollipop, and the minute that I saw the other detritus (such as discarded Band-Aids) in Lord Business' office, it became clear to me that this story was unfolding as the imagination of a little boy playing with Lego. Unfortunately, that's also where it began to fall apart a bit for me on analysis.
I'm all for the suspension of some disbelief when going to the movies. And my 8-year-old son does a lot of creative play with Lego, so I know that a child's mind can come up with some pretty creative things. The movie never defines the age of Finn, the boy who is at the center of the movie. An internet search for info about Jadon Sand, the kid who portrays Finn, suggests that he is about eight, so I think it's fair to assume that his character is close in age. Well, my 8-year-old second grader could probably figure out the label on a tube of Krazy Glue, even if the "zy" and "u" were rubbed off (particularly if there were a dozen more tubes of the stuff lying around in the basement)! On the other hand, my son would never in a million years come up with the name "Vitruvius" (in fact, this is his new favorite movie and he couldn't even recall the character's name a few hours after seeing it). I get that it's a reference to Vitruvian Man, but how many grade-schoolers know the scientific works of Leonardo Da Vinci?