The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is the sequel to the award winning, critically claimed adventure comedy The LEGO Movie, which was released in 2014. The film is set after a time skip, but following straight on from the end moments of the first film. The first film was packed from the first few seconds to the very last moments with visual gags but also social commentary without for one moment losing its plot or momentum and find every moment to come across as self-referential.
The second part mostly continues this trend. Like its predecessors, this film is CGI (although I have recently read they snuck in some stop-motion into the first film to see how well they got away with realism) but continues to do a spectacular job in replicating photorealistic Brickmation. Like the films before it, you very quickly realise this is a film you need to watch and watch again as the animators have painstakingly filled every inch of the screen with background gags, yet masterfully never detract you from the focus of the plot and story.
Where the film differs from its predecessor (and you can decide for yourself if this is detracting or not) is the occasional leaps in art form. It also has a less clear satirical take (whilst the first film – to some, ironically so – had a strong criticism of both commercialism as well moments of political), but having established the twist in the last film of the connection between the ‘LEGO world’ and the ‘real world’, it utilises this connection more during the plot of the film, with more jumps to the real world peppered throughout.
This film proves the LEGO Movie franchise is the fresh breath of animated films we desperately need.
The gags are constant and consistent and the genius of the Miller and Lord writing team shines through in that they never fall flat. There’s also a two-in-one plot twist in the film, the first one is foreshadowed constantly but hidden behind the surreal humour of the film you already expect, the second one is perhaps the only contentious point for me in a film I love with all my heart and fully consider a worthy successor– I won’t spoil it, but it involves breaking a major internal rule the first film sets for itself, and I question whether the plot twist could have been done better without doing that.
Overall, this film proves the LEGO Movie franchise is the fresh breath of animated films we desperately need to combat the cheap unimaginative executive thought process that spawns things like The Emoji Movie … although, perhaps the pain of irony is that film came out following the success of the first film. Hmm and what’s this … a PLAYMOBIL: The Movie? Oh no we’re stuck in a cycle.
