My little sister is fantastic. She’s fun, she’s witty, and she doesn’t take bull from anybody. I love everything about her but one thing. She has heinous taste in media. Her music is crap and the movies and tv she loves operate at the resonant frequency of my last nerve.
Having a little sister with such atrocious taste has soured me on kids movies as time has gone on. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved WALL-E and I teared up at Toy Story 3 with everyone else in the theater but aside from the occasional Pixar gem, I’d pretty much turned my back on the genre.
Fast forward to about six months ago. I saw a trailer for The Lego Movie. My face-palm was audible from the apartment next door. I didn’t even sit through the whole trailer and zipped away to some other video. Then over time I started hearing about it, reading interviews and advanced reviews, etcetera until somehow I found myself waiting for the theater to open on opening night.
For the succeeding hour and a half I learned how great of an impact good old fashioned, quality screenwriting can have. After the credits rolled I sat restraining myself from blurting words that would have been inappropriate for the ears of my fellow movie-goers. If you haven’t heard already, The Lego Movie was far better than it had any right to be. It has better writing and a better cast than any movie I’ve seen in a long time(sorry, Wolf of Wall Street.) Chris Pratt kills it in the lead role. There were a few moments when all I wanted in the world was for him to sing “Bye bye, Lil’ Sebastian” but some of the uniquely ‘Pratt’ moments more than made up for that shattered dream. I beg you to see the movie before looking up the cast. Slowly recognizing who voices each of the supporting cast blew me away, especially the voices that aren’t immediately recognizable.
The writing is stellar, every joke and quip hits its mark, and the third act brought me dangerously close to the dreaded ‘lone tear.’ The Lego Movie made an excellent case for not giving up on kid’s movies. It showed that they aren’t all just the same Disney Channel garbage that I’ve heard parroted by my wonderful, beautiful baby sister a million times. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not gonna leap up off the couch to go see iCarly & Dora: Adventure in Hannah Montanaland, but I’ll at least sit through the trailer.
