The Lego Movie

I’m gonna make this quick.

It has a certain kind of surreal, erratic brilliance and sardonic, self-referential humor that’s consistently inventive and appropriate...but it’s also the most relentlessly hyperactive bombardment of sounds and images I think I’ve ever experienced in cinematic form. I feel like someone dropped a toy store on me, then spent the next hour and a half smashing everything in the place onto my head. 

Let’s talk pacing, and timing: everything happens with such blinding speed and reckless agility I had almost no idea what was actually happening moment to moment. Literally could not follow the action. It shot past my eyes like the Road Runner on amphetamines during the Big Bang. Most of the movie appears to be playing on fast forward. Good golly, what an onslaught. I feel like my brain swallowed a Lite Brite getting a power surge.

It’d be easy to see this movie as nothing more than a giant commercial, but I don’t. It’s about imagination and creativity and playing and having fun and tacos, all of which I support. Everything is awesome. It’s just way, WAY too much at once. Ease up, Lego. There’s time enough for all of it.

I need a nap.