MOVIE REVIEWS: THE LEGO MOVIE

Who would have thought that a movie based on a popular toy and apparently aimed at boosting sales of the toy would receive some of the best reviews bestowed on an animated film ever? But such is the case with The Lego Movie. Writes Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune: “The Lego Movie proves that you can soar directly into and then straight past product placement into a realm of the sublime, if you’re clever enough. This isn’t just the funniest PG-rated animation in too long; it’s the funniest film, period, in months.” Richard Corliss in Time magazine one-ups that assessment, calling the movie, “the funniest, cleverest, most exhaustingly exhilarating animated feature in ages.” Peter Howell in the Toronto Star makes the same sort of speculation about the creators of the movie that other critics once did about Disney’s Alice in Wonderland animators. “The Lego Movie makers must have enjoyed some festive pharmaceuticals,” he writes, adding, “There’s more ingenuity packed into one minute of this film than there is in the entire running time of most animated amusements.” The great reviews are almost unanimous, although Kyle Smith of the New York Post was not amused. “As cute and energetic as it is,” he writes, “The Lego Movie is more exhausting than fun, too unsure of itself to stick with any story thread for too long. The action scenes are enthusiastic, colorful but uninvolving, like an 8-year-old emptying a bucket of plastic blocks.”