The Lego Movie - Review

Directors: Phil Lord, Chris Miller Writers: Phil Lord, Chris Miller Studios: Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, Lego System A/S, Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures Cast: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman Release Date (UK): 14 February 2014 Certificate: U Runtime: 100 min

ZOMG: “The Lego Movie” is awesome. Like, properly, amazingly, heart-soaringly awesome. Like, I-wanna-go-get-out-my-old-official-Lego-bucket-and-build-a-rocket-ship-with-some-brightly-coloured-interlocking-building-blocks kinda awesome. It’s so awesome its theme song is literally called “Everything is Awesome.” And this song is so infectiously catchy I can’t for the life of me imagine it ever vacating my earholes — not that I’d want it to. Sing it with me: everything is awesome, everything is cool when you’re part of a team...

Ahem. But seriously, “The Lego Movie” is super-fun. It’s like bottled joy — a bottle made of Lego! Save your silly, cynical rants about commercialism and corporatisation and let “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller take you on an exhilarating sugar rush through their giant Lego playset. In fact, any and all cynicism should be quick to drown in the sea of awesome we’re invited to plunge into here; even the toughest and most doody-headed of cynics should have their veritable pants charmed off by the subversive wit and the boundless invention “The Lego Movie” boasts by the bucketload; not to mention the sheer, explosive enthusiasm bursting out from the screen and into your face.

The vividly vibrant and thrillingly hectic world of “The Lego Movie” is a seamless mix of stop-motion and computer-animation, and it is dazzlingly gorgeous. Living in this colourful land is Emmet, a sprightly but hopelessly ordinary Lego construction worker voiced by Chris Pratt who finds himself at the centre of an age-old “chosen one” scenario. Apparently he’s “the special,” the one prophesied to defeat the evil Lord Business (Will Ferrell), who schemes to glue everything and everyone into place using a secret weapon called the Kragle. On his quest, Emmet teams up with the fugitive Master Builders, among them a kooky old mystic (Morgan Freeman), a free-spirited punk chick called WyldStyle (Elizabeth Banks), Lego Batman (Will Arnett), Lego Wonder Woman (Cobie Smulders) and a robo-pirate called Metalbeard (Nick Offerman), and is pursued by a one-man good cop/bad cop duo voiced by Liam Neeson.

Sound fun? You bet your tiny plastic caboose it is. And the whole thing whizzes along at an unstoppably exuberant pace — in fact, it moves with such frenzied ferocity you half-worry it’s all going to crash at any minute but it never does and it just keeps going and it’s utterly thrilling. All the while Lord and Miller giddily undermine the clichés of the plot at every step — in one scene, Emmet daydreams through important backstory exposition, and it’s rather strongly suggested that the central prophecy was maybe, possibly, probably made up by Morgan Freeman’s mad mystic — and generate enough geeky (Lego-owned) pop culture nods and send-ups to keep any fanbase squeeing in their seats. Where else could you see Dumbledore and Gandalf sharing the screen together and Superman getting annoyed by a clingy Green Lantern?

It’s fantastic to see a family movie which values and promotes creativity, individuality and imagination so fervently, especially when it’s attached to the wise and surprising message that although being creative can be good, sometimes simply following the instructions works too. It’s also fantastic seeing a family movie which is just this funny and witty and clever in its comedy: with rapid-fire gags, Lord and Miller’s whip-smart script has a stonking laugh-a-minute hit rate. At the end, my sides were sore from all my hysterical giggling and my face was stuck in an expression of pure, child-like glee. Put simply, “The Lego Movie” made me feel like a little kid again, playing with my Lego blocks on the floor of my bedroom, building spaceships and supercars and making up wild and crazy stories. If there’s a funner film this year I will literally shit a brick (not literally). All together now: everything is awesome, everything is cool when you’re part of a team...

Rating: 10/10

RoboCop - Review

Director: José Padilha Writer: Joshua Zetumer Studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia Pictures, Strike Entertainment Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley Release Date (UK): 7 February 2014 Certificate: 12A Runtime: 118 min

It would be far too easy for me to loudly declare that José Padilha’s shiny new “RoboCop” update is nowhere near as good as the original “RoboCop” from 1987 and then be done with it; to condemn it for lacking the smarts, the charm, the razor-sharp wit and the juicy satire of the Paul Verhoeven classic and then simply walk away. It would also be too easy to complain about the film’s much-derided PG-13 rating, which stands in bold opposition to the original’s hard-R certification; while Verhoeven’s gutter-tongued, ultraviolent sci-fi was splattered in guts and gore, Padilha’s remake takes a far more family-friendly approach; I counted a single puddle of blood and the one use of the F word — or, to be more precise, the MF word — is bleeped out.

It doesn’t take a neuro-engineer’s degree to see why hardcore fans of the Verhoeven version are pissed off — this is their favourite late-’80s blast-em-up, neutered and lobotomised for the young teen demographic. But to me, tearing down this reinvented “RoboCop” for being too tame and studio-manufactured seems a little too dismissive and knee-jerky. Because if you wipe your memory of the original film and meet this on its own terms — difficult, admittedly, considering the amount of cribbed lines and design choices (Jackie Earle Haley actually says, “I wouldn't buy that for a dollar,” I'm not kidding) — and this “RoboCop” reboot is, believe it or not, perfectly serviceable popcorn sci-fi. Now, that's certainly not what the original “RoboCop” was — it was far more daring and profound, and still is — but take this for what it is and you have a solid enough hi-tech blockbuster boasting a few scoopfuls of brain matter, plenty of style and surprising heart, if precious little blood splatter.

Besides, Padilha does manage to set his film apart from Verhoeven’s, to a certain degree. The bare bones of the plot are basically the same: in 2028 Detroit, straight-arrow police detective Alex Murphy, now played by Joel Kinnaman of the US “The Killing,” is critically injured by violent crooks. Facing death’s door, he’s taken in by robotics mega-corporation OmniCorp and reborn as the cyborg RoboCop, the future of law enforcement. What’s different is how RoboCop develops throughout the course of the story. In Verhoeven’s version, RoboCop starts off as a machine thoughtlessly following its prime directives before slowly but surely regaining its humanity. In the Padilha version it’s a little more complicated: RoboCop starts off as Murphy, his memories and personality fully intact, is stripped of his emotions when he becomes unstable and then, to the bewilderment of his creators, begins to override his programming.

What this means is that Padilha’s film lacks the (brilliant) streamlined simplicity of Verhoeven’s film — lengthy scenes featuring a distraught Murphy coming to terms with his situation and undergoing combat training could do with some trimming — but does have more focus on Murphy as a person, albeit a horribly mangled person stuck inside a robo-suit. More time is also dedicated to Murphy’s family, who in Verhoeven’s film appeared only in brief flashbacks. Here, mother and son Clara (Abbie Cornish) and David (John Paul Ruttan) are often at the front and centre of the plot: though visited by Murphy soon after his transformation, Clara and David become increasingly concerned when OmniCorp refuse them access to him. Perhaps their boosted presence overstuffs the plot, but they do lend proceedings a certain dramatic heft and aid in our emotional connection to Murphy and indeed the film.

Of course, there's a ton of CGI action on display, which Padilha handles efficiently and which should satisfy the teenage crowd. And as any fan should know, no “RoboCop” remake would be complete without some biting satire, and Padilha’s film gives it a good chomp: there are clear stabs at American businesses, politics and the media, although they’re less a fatal plunge into the dark heart of America than a slap on the wrist. An opening scene featuring an armed military drone shooting a kid dead on the streets of Tehran fits neatly into the US’s ongoing drone controversy. And like in the original, there’s a clear anti-corruption stance: Michael Keaton gets to be deliciously slimy as Raymond Sellars, the crooked head of OmniCorp, and Gary Oldman is on fine form as the genius scientist who finds himself compromised by the soulless, PR-driven world of big business. Samuel L. Jackson, meanwhile, plays a ranting, uber-patriotic, one-sided media mogul who is in no way inspired by any ranting, uber-patriotic, one-sided media moguls associated with any real American news networks like, oh I dunno, Fox News. Ahem.

But what ultimately makes Padilha’s version a success, albeit a mild one, is not the political satire, nor the CGI action. It’s that in amongst its flashy visuals and overblown set-pieces it doesn’t lose sight of it and its predecessor’s central concern: that being the all-important question, is RoboCop a machine or is he a man? Padilha understands what made Peter Weller’s man-in-a-can really tick back in ’87, his internal conflict between his programming and his humanity, and has kept that largely intact. That’s not to say that Kinnaman’s RoboCop is as compelling as Weller’s — Kinnaman tries but struggles to set himself apart from Weller’s iconic performance — but it’s those slices of humanity that help keep this from being just another brainless, hollow remake. Padilha's “RoboCop” isn’t the original film, nor did it stand a chance of being it. But it's a relief that it's directed by someone who seems to have an understanding of what made the Verhoeven film work so well. And you have to face it: this is better than it had any right to be.

Rating: 6/10

Dallas Buyers Club - Review

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