| “There aren’t any signs! How are you supposed to know what not to do?” So said Emmet, hero of the Lego movie when he arrived in Cloud Cuckoo Land. That said a lot about the film because it doesn’t attempt to stick to any rules at all.
It was substantially different from anything I expected. I presumed it would be a light, children’s movie, with a simple story involving toys. Far from it. I had to realise that lego, also, had moved on since my brother got it in the sixties, when it was all rectangular white or red bricks.
Now apparently you can build anything at all, or make up outlandish monster-like constructions, anything the imagination can come up with.
Likewise the action in the film was relentless and pretty well random, lego constructions flying here and there, making all sorts of comments without any narrative structure to the dialogue or the action.
I almost left early on but decided to stick it out, and I accept that it isn’t a bad film, it’s quite fun in parts and some of the comments are quite amusing and sharp.
I’d be interested to know what children think – probably they don’t mind the lack of narrative and can just watch the toys. Young adults might like it if they recognise their own days of lego-making.
But for an old non-lego man, I just found it all a bit too much.
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