Theatrical Review: The Lego Movie 2- The Second Part

Date: Sunday February 10 2019
Location: Cinemark Theater in Stroud Mall
Time: 11:55am
Party: 3 (my mom, sister and I)

Director: Mike Mitchell
Writers: no many to name...
Composer: Mark Mothersbaugh

Cast:
Emmett/REX Dangervest- Chris Pratt
Lucy/Wildstyle- Elizabeth Banks
Unikitty- Alison Brie
Batman- Will Arnett
Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi- Tiffany Haddish
General Mayhem- Stephanie Beatriz
Mom- Maya Rudolph
Finn- Jadon Sand
Bianca- Brooklynn Prince

Opening Comments

Going to the movies is an experience and a lot of the time, that experience depends on the audience just as much as the movie itself. While this movie wasn't as terrible as a lot of the reviews said, sitting in a great audience made it better than it would have been without. Lego movies are essentially directed towards kids and if they're chatting through the movie and commenting on various lines of dialogue, the filmmakers did their job right. The theater wasn't completely crowded, but there were enough people where it added to the experience. Kinda like the 12th man at a football game-- I'd never personally been to one in person, but they talk about the 12th man a lot. Especially in Seattle where they have a "12" flag waving above the stadium. 

Also there are some spoilers about the first movie coming ahead...

Trailers

As always, there were seven of them... and nearly all of them were kids movies or directed towards this target audience. Nothing that I'm personally excited about, but that's fine. I have my eye on a couple movies this year-- mostly Marvel related, like Captain Marvel and the conclusion of the Avengers franchise. And of couse another Star Wars movie, but that's not until December 

How to train your dragon: the hidden world
I have an idea how this movie/franchise is ultimately going to end, and it's going to be a tearjerker for sure. It was a good franchise, but I'm still not quite over the last movie...

Missing Link
It's about Bigfoot, but his name is Sue and with a guy voiced by Hugh Jackman, they travel to the mountains of Asia to find the Yeti. The animation style screams Wallace & Gromit.

The Secret Life of Pets 2
I still need to see the original... but it's hard to know what to make of what this movie is about because every trailer is different. This one is where the cat tries to teach the cute little poodle how to be a cat. It's funny, how they go into the differences between dogs and cats. 

Toy Story 4
Ok, I lied... or I just forgot about this one. There's a lot of Disney movies coming out this year that I want to see too. Aladdin and Lion King were part of my childhood and in fact among the first movies I saw in theaters. (I don't remember much about what it was like seeing the movie, but I remember my dad took me to see Aladdin- my first theater trip ever). I'm just disappointed that they premiered a trailer at the SuperBowl and they're still using this teaser trailer where it shows all the characters dancing in a circle to Joni Mitchell. I don't know the song, but I noticed "ice cream castles" was a lyric- Prince used that lyric to create a song/album for The Time that was ultimately where their songs from Purple Rain ended up. The title track is really good and the Purple Rain material is good, but the rest of it was very meh... (the song is "Both Sides Now" but it's a more upbeat version than what I'm used to hearing in the one scene in "Love Actually")

Wonder Park
The trailers for this movie are really coming out in full swing now. It's about a park that a young girl makes up and it winds up becoming real and she has to save it with some talking animals. 

Shazam
I'm still not sure what the heck this superhero movie is about. But definitely not one of those second-tier superhero like Iron-Man that's going to launch an entire franchise/universe. It seems like the only thing the DC Universe has gotten right is Wonder Woman... and maybe Aquaman. I haven't seen that one yet, but it made a lot of money and was rated well. 

Detective Pikachu
I'm ready for another trailer cuz I'd seen this one at least twice already... I'm still on the fence about whether or not I like the idea or not. Deadpool doing the voice of Pikachu is still strange to me. I also don't know if this is supposed to be a parody or legit and it's just coming off as a farce. Some of the renderings of the Pokémon are really well done, but others, I'm not really impressed with. Just speaking as a long time fan (20 years in fact!) of the main video game franchise.

The Main Attraction

After hearing some reviews, I didn't really have a lot of hope that this movie would be any good. I remember the first one coming out and liking the idea, but I didn't know if the rest of the franchise can follow suit.
This movie wound up surprising a bit, especially when they start to explain what's really going on behind the scenes. Or should I say in the real world. 

It starts right from where the original movie left off. In reality, it's revealed that Lord Business was the dad and he wanted everything in his Lego Land to follow the instructions and he didn't want his kids touching his things. But he decides to let his son Finn play with the Legos and says his sister should get to play too. 
That's when the Duplos invade Bricksburg and start to take over and life for the denizens change as they know it. Everyone is forced to toughen up... except for Emmett, who pretty much stays the same. 

The crazy thing about what the Bricksburg becomes... it's almost like it became an animated version of the Mad Max universe via Fury Road where they're living in the desert and the vehicles are harsh and everyone is wearing some sort of armor. Even Unikitty, who was the optimistic rainbow of the original movie, has toughened up and it's sad to see. 
Luckily, Emmett is still going about his life as he always has. But he worries that it's not enough for Lucy, who he'd gotten together with after the last movie. She wants him to change and get with the times.

Then the Duplos come in and take a lot of the main characters from the original movie to meet their leader. Almost like they're invaders from outer space and they kidnap Lucy, Metalbeard, Benny the spaceship enthusiast, Batman and Unikitty. 
The leader is voiced by Tiffany Haddish, who probably got this role (well-deserved, by the way) because she was a scene-stealer in the movie Girls Trip. She changes her form constantly and it's more than a little bizarre. All of the hereoes start to buy into her vision, but Lucy is not going for it. Considering she did a whole song and dance number about not being evil, it's hard to fully believe her.

On the other side of things, Emmett tries to get into space to save his friends and he allies with a seemingly cooler version of himself, Rex Dangervest, who apparently has velociraptors as allies. I guess they couldn't resist marrying the two Chris Pratt franchises together and with it being in space, they almost get Guardians of the Galaxy in there too. 

All the while, there's a deadline looming at 5:15, according to Emmett's visions. And the Duplos need to be defeated or else Armomagedon will happen... it doesn't take a genius to figure where this is going, considering the dynamic of the otherworld with Finn and his sister, Bianca. 
There's a lot of twists and turns you don't completely see coming and the bad guys aren't who you think they are. It challenges a lot of the conventions we're used to seeing in movies. Just when you think something is obvious, they flip the script on you. In that respect, it is kinda cool, but it maybe takes a little too long to reach that point. 

But ultimately I think they made the movie to teach a lesson. Telling all the siblings watching the movie to give each other a break and try to play together nicely or else they won't be able to play at all. 
I know I had that issue with my own sister growing up. As is often the case, we got closer when we got older. And we found a lot of common ground whether it's binging YouTube videos or competition shows on Food Network. 
There's also a joke in the movie that's relatable to any parent who's ever stepped on a Lego. 

Like the last movie, there were songs involved too. But there's nothing as catchy as "Everything is Awesome"- although that did make a comeback in a number of ways. There's one song that literally says how the song is going to get stuck inside of your head. Despite the five minutes or so it had in the movie and that it came back for the credits, I managed to not get it in my head... I've gotten some silly crap in my head before. Like those songs they have on the Target ads. Seriously, it's gotten so annoying with these songs. They have nothing to do with the products they're selling and they're nonsense, dime-a-dozen pop songs. "The Middle" came out of that and to me, that's the worst pop song to come out since "Call me maybe"- it's very rhyme-dictionary. I'd say I could write something better, but I literally can't write a song because I listen to too much music. There's too likely that I'd write something and it'd sound exactly like something else I'd heard hundreds of times before. 

Now I'm just side-tracking.
It was nice how they added references to the Batman movie they released last year. And they had a brief cameo of Unikitty's kingdom from her TV series. 
Yeah, they seriously made a kid's show about Unikitty being the princess of a kingdom and there are all these crazy characters and their antics. My sister loves it and I'm oddly a sucker for it too. Even if it makes no sense at all. Speaking of Mad Max, there was a show recently about Unikitty wanting to bring a rainbow to FrownTown, saying that everyone deserves the chance to be happy if only for a second. She and her friends are in this big vehicle. Meanwhile, Master Frown comes up in his own that reminded me of a vehicle in the movie where there's this guy standing at the helm shredding a guitar. Except Master Frown is doing this with keyboards. But they're crossing a desert and the vehicles are fighting each other like chariots in the Coliseum. It's pretty wild. 

I get the intrigue about Mad Max: Fury Road... but the environment and the society... it's not easy to swallow and I'd rather not see it more than once. 

Grade: B+
Not the best movie in the world, but it teaches some good lessons for its younger target audience

Theatrical Review: Lego Batman

Date: Sunday February 19 2017

Time: 12:10pm

Party: 3 (mom sister and I)

 

Director: Chris McKay (of "Robot Chicken" fame)

 

Notable Cast:

Batman- Will Arnett

Robin- Michael Cera

Barbara Gordon- Rosario Dawson

Alfred- Ralph Fiennes

The Joker- Zach Galifianakis

Opening comments 

Who knew that the Lego movie would be so huge that it'd warrant a batman spin-off that won over the box office in its first week (now second week)?

It got such rave reviews- certainly more than the past few solo batman movies.

The theater wasn't as full as I thought it'd be with the amount of cars in the parking lot. But a good number of people- mostly moms and younger kids.

 

Trailer

 

Yeah they've had several commercials for "Beauty and the Beast" (and I'm equally excited every time) but it was kind of a letdown that it was the teaser trailer again. Not quite as appetizing as it was the first few times. March needs to get here like now.

The main event 

Yeah I'm not going to go into too much detail about it, but for the first half hour, it felt over hyped. 

Batman kinda did what Deadpool did in his movie- breaking the 4th wall- but to the extreme. From the very beginning, talking us through the opening credits. Batman is so into the character of Batman you kinda gotta wonder about his sanity a bit.

It starts with this big elaborate heist with all the villains led by the Joker that Batman somehow thwarts. But you get to know the man behind the mask (he's rarely without it in this movie) and how deep down he's lonely but is afraid of his own feelings (and snake clowns apparently).

Things are changing in Gotham with Barbara Gordon taking over for commissioner James Gordon (her father) and wanting to reform Gotham's actions against crime. Batman unwittingly takes in Dick Grayson. And even though the Joker surrenders himself (along with 99% of the other villains) there's obviously something afoot. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a movie.

Batman takes a long time but he eventually does change and accepts that he can't do this alone and that he needs other people in his life. 

The Joker recruits so many different villains it's hard to keep track of them all (and I don't want to spoil how bizarre a lot of them are since they're not exactly from the same realm of fantasy). But the second half is definitely better than the first. It doesn't get nearly as insane as what they did with the Lego Movie and it makes about as much sense (which is still very little) but sometimes you just have to sit back and go with it.

There were a lot of great jokes (once the movie stopped taking itself so seriously) and it got lots of different laughs. Some were great adult jokes without being raunchy. (One of the villains being named Condiment-man is debatable). Like one part where the computer reads off the emails he has and one was a newsletter from bed bath and beyond. (That got a laugh out of one of the 40-somethings in the crowd).

The cast itself... Will Arnett does the whole Bat-voice and is totally into his character. He's great at what he does here, but it wears out its welcome for me and took a while to win me back.
Michael Cera- I hadn't seen since the year I saw "Scott Pilgrim" and a bunch of his other movies. He's really good at the orphaned Robin character. Ralph Fiennes is interesting as Alfred- a good interesting. It's different from his typical work.
And Zach Galifianakis is the perfect Joker in this. He's brilliant and should really do voiceover work more often.

Other comments I can add...
I liked the use of music in this. I mean, there's no original songs that are as catchy as "Everything Is Awesome" but they're not bad. Yet I remember more that they liked to play "I just died in your arms tonight" by the Cutting Crew whenever Bruce Wayne/Batman sees Barbara Gordon (ok, only twice... but I love that song... I remember loving it when I was a kid because I picked out by the instrumentals that it was from the 80's... the best decade of music in my opinion).
Then Robin had a scene where he wanted to pick a theme song for them to kick butt and fight crime. Including "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley (one of my many favorite 80's songs... and I have dozens :P) and "Fly Robin Fly."
Batman was certainly a fan of heavy metal and beatboxing.

But I also didn't appreciate the fact the code to the Bat-Cave is "Iron-Man Sucks"...

like, HELL NO!
I can only hope that they don't try to reincarnate Iron-Man as many times as they did with Superman and Batman, trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle they had with Michael Keaton and Christopher Reeve.
And for me, it's kinda at the point where I want RDJ to have more creative freedom in his career, so the sooner he stops being Tony Stark/Iron-Man, the sooner he can get that Oscar he deserved years ago for "Tropic Thunder" (yeah... never letting that go).

Grade: B+
(yeah, all the hype it got from the critics kinda ruined it for me... not to mention "Deadpool" kinda beat Batman to this type of movie and he did it a lot better...

I may add "Suicide Squad"  to the list as well, but I gotta see the movie first. And we do have the DVD in the house. Just waiting for dad to get home so we can watch it together... it was his idea).

Theatrical Review: The Lego Movie

Date: Sunday, February 9, 2014
Location: Pocono Movieplex
Time: 2:15pm
Party: 3 (mom & sister)

Directors: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Type: animation
Music: Mark Mothersbaugh

Cast:
Emmet- Chris Patt
President Business- Will Ferrell
Wyldstyle- Elizabeth Banks
Batman- Will Arnett
Vitruvius- Morgan Freeman
Good Cop/Bad Cop- Liam Neeson
Unikitty- Alison Brie
The Astronaut- Charlie Day
Superman- Channing Tatum
Green Lantern- Jonah Hill
Wonder Woman- Cobie Smulders
Metal Beard- Nick Offerman
Finn- Jadon Sand

[Opening Remarks]

With all the big movies out right now, all the Oscar contenders, you'd think my first review of the year would be one of them...
WRONG!

My first review goes to an animated movie that as soon as I heard about it, I wrote off. My exact words were:
"They're definitely playing to a younger demographic with this one, between the animation style and the cultural references. I'm a sucker for all those things, but I doubt it's something I'd pay to go see."

Technically, my mom paid for the tickets, but I ended up eating my words. Considering how often I pick out the movie, it seemed only right to let my sister suggest this one. We are suckers for cultural references and goofy animation, after all...

Not to say that I came in with zero expectations, but what little expectations I had... the payout was two-fold.
 [Coming Attractions]

We came in a little later than we should have, so during the remainder of the "Mr. Peabody" preview, we spent most of it trying to find seats.
This was the second showing on a cold Sunday when we were expecting some snow. To which I say, never underestimate the power of kids dying to see an animated movie.

By this point, I'd grown a little tiresome of "Mr. Peabody"... DreamWorks is promoting it like crazy under the tutelage of it being a studio that released the Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda franchises... taking my resentment of the 4th Shrek movie out of the picture, they have done well with the others.
...admittedly, I'm still kinda pissed that Robert Downey Jr. pulled out of this movie because Marvel has kept him too busy to do much else. Not to mention the role went to the dude that insults oranges on the Minute Maid commercials. Yes, I know it's Ty Burrell from "Modern Family." That's just my inside joke .
On the other hand, I guess I can't be too upset. The movie looks so silly that he might have been better off.

Other previews include a teaser of the "Muppets" sequel and the Morgan Freeman narrated IMAX movie, "Island of Lemurs: Madagascar"...
When I saw the title months ago, I was afraid it was an unnecessary reboot of the DreamWorks franchise... but it looks pretty spectacular. All those years of seeing "Zoboomafoo," I had no idea lemurs actually leaped like that :-P

[Review]

Here's the tag-line that'll accompany my postings of this review on social media.
"Shut up... you had me at 'double-decker couch.'"

Seriously, that was the one joke in the first trailer that kept me completely dismissing this movie. Some ideas are just too crazy for me not to appreciate and latch onto. That's the kind of person I am.

For the record, I was a Lego kid... not in the same big way as "The Man Upstairs" (that's an actual character in the movie and I'm not gonna spoil who that is... I'll let Google take care of that), but I did do  some Legos.
Namely, there was a Christmas where I asked for a Lego pirate ship. I don't remember how much help I had with putting it together, but it took a couple months. It looked pretty awesome on our dining room table 8-)

What's kinda amazing about this movie is that it has something for all ages. You have all the bright colors and imagines for the kids. During some action sequences, it's easy to see the amazing 3D animation potential. The jokes rang from so-so to ha-ha funny to even LMAO funny (for me, there were 2-3 scenes that had me laughing that hard).
For the boys, they had an astronaut, a pirate and DC superheroes. For the girls, they had a kick-ass female character called Wyldstyle, who supposedly had issues with picking a name, and Unikitty, who lived in this chaotic realm called Cloudy Cuckoo Land.

And for the adults who got dragged to this movie by their kids, there's some interesting political commentary to take into account as well.

The movie follow everyman, Emmett, a construction worker among 1,000's who follows "the instruction" to a tee. We're led to believe he does the same thing every day because that's just the way it is in Bricksenberg.
By accident, he stumbles across "the piece of resistance," the only thing that can stop Bricksenberg president, President Business from unleashing the dreaded "Kragle" on TACO Tuesday.
(The "Kragle" is actually tube of Krazy Glue with some letters scratched out and the evil plot is encasing the Lego Universe in Krazy Glue so nobody will be able to defy the instructions again).

Emmett is then recruited by blind wizard Virtruvius and his top student, Wyldstyle to save the world. Supposedly because whoever finds "the piece of resistance" must be "The special", a Master Builder, the most important person in the universe.

But they and their allies, which include Batman and Unikitty, quickly learn he might not be the most qualified person. Apparently he'd spent his life following the instructions so well that he has nothing else going for him to set him apart. Plus the "double-decker couch" was the only original idea he could come up with... and everyone else seems to think it's the dumbest idea ever.
On the plus side, it goes make a couple appearances and actually saves their lives in one scene. After head of the Secret Police, Bad Cop sinks their ship, the only wreckage he and the micro-managers left behind was the double-decker couch... in which the heroes hid and eluded capture.

Even as a Marvel fangirl, I couldn't help but love how they used the DC superheroes in this movie. On the comedic side, we had this side-plot of Green Lantern dying to hang out with Superman, who wants nothing to do with him... and when they're captured by the bad guys, they end up in neighboring cells.
It's even funnier that their voices belong to Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, now known for their collaboration on the 21/22 Jump Street films...

Easily, the scene-stealer for me was Batman. It's interesting because he's played by Will Arnett, an actor I don't really take seriously, who plays the character in that phony deep-voice Christian Bale used to ruin the character for me... with him, it just works because this movie needed someone with a dry sense of humor.
There's also a love triangle involving him, his girlfriend Wyldstyle and Emmett... all kinds of hilarity, but the tops is the Star Wars cameo. As if it wasn't funny enough that Batman asks aloud where they'd get a hyperdrive and he gets called on it... he appears to jump ship for a couple minutes, only to come back and ruin a moment Emmett and Wyldstyle are about to have...

And just when you think you know what's going to happen, there are substantial curveballs...

[Political Commentary and (Possibly) Overthinking Things]

The commentary makes this movie out to be a statement against socialism and the utopian model... speaking out against conformity and all that. I've experienced it in "The Giver" and "Fahrenheit 451"... no matter how perfect you can make something, there's always room for anomaly and that one thing can cause a whole system to collapse. President Business spent years doing away with the Master Builders because they're individuals that create new things outside the instructions. No matter what they are, he sees them as a threat because going outside the instructions can only be perceived as chaos.

For a number of reasons, my favorite of the Lego worlds shown in the movie was the Cuckoo one. Batman might not like it ("I hate this place") and President Business did send Bad Cop to destroy it... it's crazy, but everyone was happy and it was just one big nerdgasm, something I can totally appreciate.
At the same time, the demeanor of Unikitty hints that not even that world is paradise. She spends the movie trying to stay positive, trying to keep her other emotions inside until she finally snaps. Kinda reminded me of the Amity section in the "Divergent" series... everyone is pleasant, kind and loving, but deep down their biggest flaw is that they're a little dumb in their being too trusting of other people.

Then I also got to thinking about how I think of Legos. I was never a master builder. I got as far as building that pirate ship with the instructions and I didn't feel up to doing more than that. Either because I wasn't creative enough or I was the kind of kid who preferred coloring between the lines than setting outside of them.
Nowadays, that's not quite as true, but remains an inherent flaw. Deep down, I do crave conformity because it would at least give me a place to fit in, but I have more fun when I write beyond the realm of possibility and listen to music outside the tastes of people in my age group.

[Remaining Comments]

I can't get through the rest of this without addressing the theme song.
In this conformist society, everyone does the same thing every day, everyone watches this show "Where's my Pants?" and everyone listens to the same song "Everything is Awesome!"
...based on the trailers, I was afraid it was going to be a brainwashing anthem of some kind. Instead, it became nothing more than the only song the radio plays and everyone is conditioned to never get tired of it :-P to my relief, they only played it through maybe 3-4 times throughout the entire movie. It might not catch on in household with young children the way "Let it go" has, but it still has that potential.

Taking Batman out of the equation temporarily (gotta face it, he had most of the best lines in the entire movie, lol), the biggest laugh I got out of it was when they finally let the 80's astronaut guy build his spaceship... and he proceeded to shoot everything across the realms while screaming "Spaceship!"
He was having so much fun with it, I couldn't help getting as much a kick out of it as I did :-P

In general, the cast was pretty good. It was more about the characters than the actors. Liam Neeson plays a pretty good Good Cop/Bad Cop character who actually has the two personalities... that is until President Business has his way and :gasp: erases the Good Cop face with a Q-Tip and Nail Polish remover.
Morgan Freeman is great in everything he does.

And Will Ferrell returns to play another pretty good bad guy. I enjoyed his voiceover work in "Mega-Mind"... which to me felt like it got diminished by the fact "Desipicable ME" got a sequel (an amazing sequel at that)... but he plays a pretty good baddie in this one too.
A control-freak dictator on the rise with very pronounced OCD. Seriously, only Will Ferrell could have played this guy... yet another idiot with a sense of entitlement, but yeah... coming out of the movie, I just felt bad that I didn't bother to see the "Anchorman" sequel.
If I'm lucky, my dad will see it in-flight on the way back from a trip overseas and can determine if it's worth picking up a copy... when it comes out.

Grade: B+

[Coming Soon]

#40 on my countdown:

A Universal animated film based on a true story that has a notable impact on my childhood.