Movie Reaction: The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part

Formula: The LEGO Movie -

Well, my brain is still in tact, and that's a little disappointing. The first LEGO Movie baffled me. I couldn't believe everything it got away with. It had a dizzying collection of intellectual property on screen together. It used the long history of diverse LEGO collections to build a variety of worlds. The voice cast was so packed that I imagined every long shot person they called to play a part said "yes" then suggested a few friends who would also be willing to record 3 lines. Even the screenplay managed to be meta while still taking itself seriously. The whole movie felt like a magic trick.

Inevitably, the sequel wouldn't do that. And really, The LEGO Movie 2 felt more like a part 3 or 4 given the releases of The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Ninjago Movie in the interim. And there's the fact that some of the brain trust behind the first movie, namely Chris Lord and Phil Miller stepping down as directors, changed. Altogether there wasn't as much to get excited about with this sequel either going into or coming out of the movie.

A lot is still the same. The film picks up right after the end of the first film before jumping ahead a few years. The LEGO world turns into a post-apocalyptic wasteland although Emmet (Chris Pratt) refuses to let that get him down. After a mysterious figure kidnaps most of the key supporting characters - Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett), Unikitty (Alison Brie), MetalBeard (Nick Offerman), and Benny (Charlie Day) - Emmet sets off on a mission to rescue them. On his journey, he meets a familiar stranger (also voiced by Pratt) who is an amalgam of all of Pratt's star-making roles since the first LEGO movie came out (Starlord and Owen from Jurassic World, mainly). Meanwhile, the captured folks meet the shape-shifting Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) who has a grand plan for a wedding that appears to have nefarious motivations.

One of my favorite parts of the first movie becomes a liability in the sequel. Late it the first movie, there's that live-action scene with Will Ferrell and his son, in which we realize that the movie we've been watching is a manifestation of the kid playing. I loved that and they handled it in a way that didn't distract from the pure fun of the movie that much or for very long. The LEGO Movie 2 has trouble working in that conceit. There's a whole story with Maya Rudolph as the kids' mom and it gets in the way too often. Where the first movie had the live-action element as a surprise, this movie had it as a structural impediment. I would've rather they dropped it entirely like The LEGO Batman Movie. As an audience, we care about the LEGO characters, not the kids playing with the LEGOs.

I'm being way too down on this movie though. It's still a wild amount of fun. It is packed dense with a variety of jokes. There's meta humor, clever wordplay, sight-gags, funny songs, jokes that went over my head, dumb jokes that made me groan. It still has plenty of Lord and Miller charm in the script. All the voice actors have a lot of fun with these characters. It's great that Chris Pratt has become an action movie star, but I like that he gets to let out his Andy Dwyer side (Parks & Rec) in this movie. While nothing is as great as "Everything is Awesome", this movie hits hard with the music, which is all pretty good. I love how the "build anything" ethos of LEGO is used throughout. The graphics engine used for this still looks great, even if I remember the boundaries getting pushed a little more back in 2014.

At the end of the day, The LEGO Movie 2 is everything you'd expect a sequel to be. All the familiar pieces are still there. It's the same kind of movie, with a lot of the same strengths. All the parts are maybe 80 or 90% as good though, which has the cumulative effect of feeling like a let down.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend