Everything Is Awesome
Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you’re part of a team! Everything is awesome when you’re living your dream! Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you’re part of a team! Everything is awesome when you’re living your dream! Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you’re part of a team! Everything is awesome when you’re living your dream! Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you’re part of a team! Everything is awesome when you’re living your dream!
The Lego movie is actually awesome enough that the theme song stops being a ridiculous parody of a constructed pop song and becomes TOTALLY LEGIT. I am not an excitable guy, nor am I subject to bouts of giddiness or whimsy, but my girlfriend and I are jumping up and down and high-fiving non-stop right now. It’s a little ridiculous, but this is probably the best movie I’ve seen in a long time.
I’m extremely impressed with Lego. This could have been a two hour toy commercial, designed to get kids to wheedle their parents into shelling out thirty bucks for the latest laser firing hunk of plastic. You know, like Transformers was in the ‘80s. Instead Lego doubled down on their commitment not to selling product, but to inspiring creativity and imagination. The movie never stops demonstrating not only technical wizardry (the explosions look amazing), but also in how much FUN the people that made it were having.
The movie contains three frames of reference they use to set the tone of various scenes. They draw you in with the Lego people frame of reference – the characters are compelling in a simple, sweet, and funny way. But every time they draw you in, they remind you that you are watching a Lego movie by breaking the fourth wall a bit and showing you Lego ships moving in a herky jerky “someone is clearly just holding this and flying it around in their hand”, or showing you an old timey movie placard to indicate time passing, or showing you string tied to characters to make them fly. And it all WORKS. It keeps you laughing and feeling great through the entire movie. Finally, towards the end, they blow your mind with a third frame of reference that I can’t talk about because IT BLEW UP MY MIND AND NOW MY MIND IS IN THE WATER SEE IT SWIMMING.
The film is also a liberal’s wet dream on the screen. The bad guy of the movie is literally called Lord Business. He incidentally also looks a lot like Mitt Romney. His reason for being evil is that he can’t handle change, and he wants to make everything stay exactly the same forever, because he can’t stand people playing with “his toys”. He is fought by an elite group of Master Builders, who are trained to see everything around them as a method of expression and creativity. Caught in the middle are the unthinking masses of humanity kept placid by Business’ fast food, constructed pop songs, and dumbing television shows. In other words, conservatives fight with college educated elite liberals over the hearts and minds of the everything work force that just want to get through the day and be happy. At one point in the movie, the Master Builders convince the populace to follow their lead and rise up against their soulless robotic oppressors and battle for freedom using the power of art, creativity, and community. The only thing missing was Clinton busting out a saxophone solo. Even if you’re a conservative, though, you’re going to enjoy this movie, because it taps into the basic American impulse toward freedom.
The final message of the movie is extremely worthwhile, and something that needs to be baldly stated from time to time just to make sure people keep believing in it. I’m not going to lay it out for you, because it will have a lot more impact delivered by a yellow plastic guy an inch and a half tall. Just . . . see the movie. I could keep writing, but the movie says it all on its own. See it. Everything is awesome. EVERYTHING IS AWESOME! EVERYTHING IS COOL WHEN YOU’RE PART OF A TEAM!
