To get the controversy off my chest: Yes, The LEGO Movie carries a brand name right in the title. Yes, it could easily be accused of being a 90 minute commercial for a toy product. There was a time in this country (namely, the 1980s) when toy manufacturers would produce TV shows, mixing up entertainment with advertising in the tender minds of their youth demographic, essentially ruining us forever; There’s a reason that the Transformers movies have made any money at all. We seem to be in a new age of that same ethos of ultra-marketing, only with an Internet to exacerbate the matter. Not a single kid-friendly mainstream studio film can pass these days without the stink of branding wafting from it. That said, The LEGO Movie is perhaps one of the cleverest, funniest, and perhaps most creative films I’ve seen in a long while. It’s fresh, enjoyable, and seems to celebrate the joyous chaos of childhood play over the blind consumption of product. LEGO, in addition to being the ubiquitous plastic building blocks of many a generations’ youth, has, over the course of the last 15 years or so, been building a bizarre video game empire wherein they re-purpose famous film franchises (Batman, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc.) as Lego versions of themselves, complete with C-shaped hands and noseless yellow faces.
These video games – as I have discovered in my very limited exposure to them – have a cutesy, self-aware, almost self-deprecating tone, lending them a comforting anarchic humor. And it’s that comforting anarchic humor that defines The LEGO Movie. The film takes place in a world made of LEGOs, and the characters all have snap-off hair and can merrily disassemble the world around them into whatever their little plastic minds desire. And while it’s not filmed in stop-motion animation (it’s entirely CGI), the characters have the pleasantly stiff and jerky movement that marks the form. It’s a film with the rules of a young boy at play, breathlessly making things up as he goes along. Even the story feels like it was cribbed from a child’s playbook. A boring-yet-energetic everyman named Emmet (Chris Pratt) finds himself unexpectedly enlisted into an underground resistance of freedom fighters and “master builders” when he stumbles upon the legendary Piece of Resistance, the only force in the world that can undo The Kragl, a secret mystery weapon in the employ of Lord Business – also President Business (Will Ferrell), who seeks to destroy the world on Taco Tuesday.
Emmet, a blissfully naïve weirdo, may not have the building chops, however, to impress the other master builders, a team that includes a bouillabaisse of recognizable characters from Batman (Will Arnett) to Abraham Lincoln, to Michelangelo the sculptor, to Michelangelo the ninja turtle, to Shaquille O’Neal (playing himself), to a scratched up LEGO astronaut from the 1980s. Also mixed up in this mass are Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman), a pair of free agents. Most children’s films in the CGI era tend to skew toward a pace that hummingbirds would find to be too fast, chucking hundreds of unfunny gags at the camera in the frantic hopes of distracting the audience. The LEGO Movie is frantic, to be sure, but it feels like frantic-ness with a point; There is a direction where all this weird wild silliness is headed. It was made by the same team that made Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, if that gives you any sort of indication. And while The LEGO Movie would be fine were it just a frantic and clever children’s comedy, it additionally bothers to reach beyond its bounds and address its own artificiality in a plot twist far cleverer, more daring, and more meaningful than anything seen in most adult thrillers.
Since we know that we’re looking at little plastic LEGO men who merrily attach plastic parts to their own bodies and occasionally wield giant Q-tips, it makes sense that the filmmakers address that. The LEGO Movie is broad, breathless fun, and a joyous celebration of childhood chaos.‘Astro Boy’ Movie Coming From ‘Lego Movie’ Animation StudioPosted on Thursday, February 5th, 2015 by Angie HanAstro Boy is flying back to the big screen, this time in live action. Animal Logic, the animation and effects studio behind Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Lego Movie, is developing a new film based on the iconic Japanese character.Perhaps not surprisingly, given Hollywood’s current obsession with superheroes, the new version of Astro Boy is described as being “in the same league as an Iron Man.” More on the Astro Boy movie after the jump. THR reports Animal Logic is currently seeking screenwriters for its Astro Boy movie. No director or stars are attached at this time. Australia’s Animal Logic Entertainment and Japan’s Tezuka Productions are teaming on the project.
First created by Osamu Tezuka in 1951, Astro Boy is a robot invented by a scientist as a replacement for his dead son. However, he can’t grow up like a normal human child, so the scientist abandons him to a cruel circus owner. Astro Boy eventually becomes a hero, using his special robot powers for good.Tezuka’s original Astro Boy manga has been adapted into multiple anime series. The character was also brought to life in 2009 CG-animated 3D movie featuring Freddie Highmore as the voice of Astro Boy. The film was an indifferently reviewed flop.Animal Logic, naturally, has higher hopes for their new Astro Boy. Unlike the cartoons, which were targeted at kids, the live-action Astro Boy movie is envisioned as a comic book adventure with four-quadrant appeal.“We’ve seen his as a manga, an anime and an animated movie but we’ve never seen him as a live action movie or him as a superhero,” said producer Zareh Nalbandian. “We actually see him in the same league as an Iron Man.”Animal Logic is known for animation work on films such as The Lego Movie and Happy Feet, and its VFX work on the likes of Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Great Gatsby, and The Matrix.