2.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang
Well, it was inevitable.
I can’t really say this is a case of the sophomore curse, since The LEGO Batman Movie arrived in between, and it was quite entertaining.
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| Even though their beloved Bricksburg has been blasted into post-apocalyptic rubble, cheerful Emmet has lost none of his optimism ... much to the annoyance of gal-pal Lucy. |
But The LEGO Movie 2 is a serious disappointment: a clumsy mess with little of its 2014 predecessor’s charm and cheeky creativity. This sequel suffers from all the flaws inherent in bad animated films: poor pacing; a random storyline that lurches from one scene to the next, with little effort at rational continuity; and a gaggle of truly dreadful songs … including the ill-advised decision to undercut the first film’s anthem, “Everything Is Awesome.”
By far the worst sin, though, is the way this new LEGO entry violates the first film’s ingeniously constructed divide between “our” world, and the realm inhabited by these delightful brick characters. This barrier was an important clue to the powerful weapon — the “Kragle” — wielded by the “evil” Lord Business.
I’ve hammered this point many times before, while denouncing poor writing: Fantasy mustadhere to its own established set of rules. Failure to do so, results in a loss of suspense and viewer involvement. There’s no reason to worry about potential peril, if slipshod writers just make stuff up as they go.
And I’m surprised, because this film’s scripters — Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — are veterans of the first film. They should know better.
Lord, Miller and director Mike Mitchell err further by devoting too much screen time to real-world activity. That was the first film’s big reveal — that there was a “real world” — and, granted, it’s true they couldn’t pull off that surprise a second time. And although — in fairness — there is an important underlying message in these real-world activities, it’s blindingly clear early on.
Which all-too-quickly turns this limp sequel into a tedious case of overstating the obvious.
The story, such as it is:
Five years have passed since the heroes of Bricksburg prevailed against their initial foe, but things subsequently have become much worse. Even the effervescently cheerful Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) finds it hard to remain optimistic in the face of repeated assaults by DUPLO invaders from outer space. Bricksburg has become Apocalypseburg, a battle-scarred landscape straight out of Mad Max, because rapidly adapting DUPLO monsters wreck everything faster than it can be rebuilt.
(As before, this film’s strongest suit is the way it cheekily references all manner of pop-culture characters, books, movies, songs and even actual people. That — and a deluge of snarky one-liners — save this sequel from total turkeydom. The LEGO residents may be under siege, but they’re no less witty.)
Attempts to take this battle to the enemy have been mounted by Superman and other members of the Justice League — including a Jason Momoa-style LEGO Aquaman — but they’ve vanished, never to return. Meanwhile, fresh incursions continue to be mounted by unstoppable DUPLO weapons controlled by the helmeted, white-garbed, ominously silent General Mayhem.
This nefarious individual finally promises to stop such assaults, if Emmet’s best friends — hard-charging Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), the egomaniacal Batman (Will Arnett), glitter-mad Unikitty (Alison Brie), pirate Metal Beard (Nick Offerman) and starry eyed spaceman Benny (Charlie Day) — agree to be taken beyond the dread Stairgate, to the planet ruled by shape-shifting Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (Tiffany Haddish).
(Say it slowly.)
Poor, stalwart Emmet is left behind, deemed useless by General Mayhem. That doesn’t sit well with the plucky master builder, particularly since Lucy is his sweetheart; he therefore mounts a solo expedition to penetrate the Stairgate himself. (Cue a droll riff on the “stargate sequence” from 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
Once on the other side, facing overwhelming odds, Emmet’s mission seems hopeless … until the well-timed intervention of Rex Dangervest, a Han Solo-esque spaceship mercenary with a crew of velociraptors (which seems rather a stretch, even in this madcap realm). Now more optimistic, Emmet follows Rex’s lead through the dangerous Systar System, a galaxy of planets that are distinctively different from each other (and all quite weird).
Their goal: the planet ruled by Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi, where they hope to rescue all of Emmet’s friends.
But — as was the case in the first film — all is not quite as it seems. Worse yet, events seem to follow the pattern of a truly frightful nightmare Emmet endured, early on.
Unfortunately, the eventual reveals aren’t such a much, and Lord and Miller resort to far too many tedious, said-bookism explanations. The result is mindlessly chaotic, with little basis for the relentless sequences of LEGO-destroying carnage. This film too frequently becomes the sort of tedious, landscape-shattering superhero movie that it should, instead, be making fun of.
More to the point, we’ve got about 30 minutes of story/plot in a flick stretched into 106 minutes.
This explains the frequent song breaks, for original tunes such as the well-titled “Catchy Song” and several other insufferably cheerful bubblegum numbers — Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi’s anthem is particularly obnoxious — along with snatches of established hits from Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Rod Stewart and numerous others.
The film’s overall look is just as colorfully dazzling as its predecessor, and many of the rapid-fire LEGO building sequences are amusing in their own right. There’s no shortage of imagination at work here; it simply isn’t in service of anything approaching a coherent plot.
Pratt continues to be appropriately golly-gee-wizards, as the resolute Emmet; Banks makes Lucy a grimly resolute blend of Lara Croft and Wonder Woman. Arnett’s smugly arrogant Batman is a stitch, and Haddish slides persuasively from sweet to sinister, while we try to get a bead on Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi’s actual motives.
But Offerman, Day and Brie don’t make much of an impression with Metal Beard, Benny and Unikitty, and a wealth of cameo voices — including Channing Tatum (Superman), Jonah Hill (Green Lantern), Momoa (Aquaman), Ralph Fiennes (Alfred the butler) — aren’t present long enough to even register.
Lord, Miller and Mitchell utterly fail, as master builders.
Quite a comedown, from what we’ve been conditioned to expect from this franchise.
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