Hey everyone, Jack Drees here! Today I’m reviewing “The LEGO Movie.” Why am I doing this? Next Friday, February 10th to be exact, “The LEGO Batman Movie” will be out, so I figured I’d review this movie in the same universe as that upcoming movie, so I guess it kind of makes sense, right? Anyway, let’s start the review.

“The LEGO Movie” is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also directed “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and stars Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, and Will Arnett. This movie is about a nobody named Emmett that is believed to be “the special,” which essentially makes him the most interesting person in the universe. Once one of the movie’s characters, Wildstyle, find this out from Emmett slipping this out by accident per se, he is then brought on a quest to save the universe from potential doom.

Let’s start off with the characters, starting with the main character of Emmett. Essentially, Emmett is shown at the beginning of the film trying to blend in with everyone, in one scene, it’s noticeable because he says loves “this” or “that” in front of his co-workers whenever they mention something they are going to do or something they like. I think this character was brought to life extremely well by Chris Pratt courtesy of stellar voice acting and excellent writing. By the way, the writing in this movie is one of the movie’s superior qualities and its something I’m constantly gonna bring up.

Next up is Wildstyle, she meets with Emmett at the start of the film and out of all the characters in the entire flick, I would say she wasn’t really my favorite. Well, guess what? That doesn’t say much because much like Emmett, this character was brought to life and well written. Although I do think if she wasn’t interacting with Emmett during the early chase scene in the film, that part wouldn’t be as fun and interesting as it was in the final product.

Morgan Freeman is also in this film and plays a blind wizard named Vitruvius. Once again, another well acted performance and another well written character. During the quest, this guy is essentially Emmett’s mentor. It’s not really surprising after all, a lot of movies have one for a younger character, and I will say in this movie it does work. I also will bring this up, Vitrivius also reminds me of a slightly more talkative and blind version of Gandalf. I wouldn’t say that’s a BAD thing because it works for his character, although it is a little cliche. Also not to mention Gandalf actually is in this movie, if you have not seen the movie look out for it.

Will Ferrell plays the villain in this movie, President Business, also known as Lord Business. His motivation is to glue everyone to the ground permanently so they will stop “messing with his stuff.” Are you really surprised to hear me say this is another lively and well written character? Because this guy is. Also, I’m gonna bring up one scene where he meets up with a character that goes by the name Good Cop/Bad Cop (Two characters in one essentially), he dresses up in this mega gigantic armor looking suit and makes a dramatic entrance into his office. Throughout the scene you can see this guy walking and it looks as if he is about to step on you! Also, when Will Ferrell says “Don’t be so serious.” It’s almost rather funny and scary at the same time.

There are so many funny characters in this movie, whether they be main characters or supporting characters, who’s the funniest out of all them in my opinion? That spot, goes to Batman, played by Will Arnett. Batman has some of the movie’s absolute funniest lines, Will Arnett gives a really great performance (I mean, what two things are you expecting me to say about any character in this movie?), and I’d say this character stole the show. There’s also an original song that was made for this character that plays for a few seconds during the movie, but if you watch the end credits, you can hear the whole thing there. During the credits, once you hear the words “Yes, this is real music!” The song has started, just an alert for those of you who are possibly curious to find the song.

Before we go onto anything else, I’m gonna bring up one more character, and it’s one that I already mentioned, and that character is Good Cop/Bad Cop. I really liked this character, or should I say, these characters for phenomenal voicework and excellent writing (If you’re sick of me saying this you are free to exit the review). These characters are played by the same actor, Liam Neeson, and when Liam plays Good Cop, he talks in a whimsical high pitch voice, when he’s Bad Cop, he sounds much like the badass you’d recognize from “Taken.” This character’s original and there’s one scene in the movie I won’t spoil, but it’s hilarious because Liam’s characters switch between their personalities at a pretty constant rate and based on the situation at hand, it adds to the hilarity.

I mentioned before that the voice acting in this movie is spectacular, but I’m not gonna talk about that, I just think it’s awesome. What I really want to get at is the story and writing. I love this writing for so many reasons. First off, the writers make this movie insanely funny for both kids and adults. To add to the humor, there so many references in this movie. You have Dracula, you have so many DC characters put into the film, you’ve got a mock version of Middle Earth called Middle Zealand, also you have Gandalf as well. You also have Michelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dumbledore from Harry Potter, Star Wars characters, Abe Lincoln, 2002 NBA all stars, and more. There’s some moments where some of the writing involves poking fun at some characters in one way or another, it’s hilarious! The jokes in this movie feel like they are going at a mile a minute and that completely works for this film! The movie essentially feels like it had “The Simpsons” style humor with much different characters and animation styles.

One of the biggest positives I can state from this movie is that while this is a movie that revolves around the product of LEGO, it never feels like a commercial for it. Sure, it may technically be one, stating which characters are already available in LEGO form, and perhaps even stating what can be built in terms of sets. In a world that has a video game based movie known as “Hitman: Agent 47” which feels more like a commercial for Audi, this is great. The fact that this movie is like this, only makes me build my hype more for “The LEGO Batman Movie.”

“The LEGO Movie” is in my opinion, one of the best animations ever made. It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and while I have mentioned before it has incredible writing and voice acting, it most certainly doesn’t degrade the other awesome qualities this movie contains. I’m gonna give “The LEGO Movie” a 10/10. If you have not seen this movie, please see it once, you won’t regret it. Even if you don’t like animations, I think you will enjoy this movie. Anyways, I am soon planning to see “The LEGO Batman Movie” once it comes out in cinemas next week, and if you want to see some of my latest posts, I’ll post one down below, specifically my most recent one, which is my top 10 best “Family Guy” episodes. I’m debating on whether or not I should do a worst list but we’ll see the future holds. Also, one reminder about that post, it does happen to contain spoilers for certain episodes. Stay tuned for more reviews and posts. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

TOP 10 BEST “FAMILY GUY” EPISODES: https://scenebefore.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/top-10-family-guy-episodes-spoilers/