By Jesus Figueroa
LEGOs come to life on the big screen with a compelling underdog film in Warner Brothers’s “The LEGO Movie.”
The storyline of the film is complex and reaches down to dark themes making it a great film for adults as well as kids.
LEGO villain Lord Business, voiced by Will Ferrell, steals the LEGO universe’s most powerful weapon the “Kragle” from Vitruvious, voiced by Morgan Freeman. Vitruvious tells of a prophecy of a yellow-faced LEGO man who shall save the universe and stop Lord Business.
Freeman gives Vitruvious a voice which sounds wise and knowledgable. The mystical-sounding voice allows the audience to believe all the unbelievable things Vitruviois says.
Ferrell’s performance is a loud annoying one. There is no real emotion through most of the film. It just seems like he speaks loud and incoherently making his character seem illogical.
Regular LEGO construction worker Emmet, voiced by Chris Pratt, does all he can to be liked by the rest of the LEGO world by putting on a smile every morning, saying hello to everyone he comes across and keeping a happy appearance throughout the day, yet his normal life may have made him into the most dull LEGO in the LEGO universe.
Pratt does some magnificent voice acting as his tone matches the mood of the character every step of the way. He brings sympathy to the character through a charismatic, friendly-yet-dim-witted voice.
At the end of the work day, Emmet notices a strange LEGO lurking in the construction site, which is against instructions. He goes to investigate and finds Wyldstyle, voiced by Elizabeth Banks, searching through the construction site.
Emmet falls into a deep chasm and into an adventure that puts everything he knew into question.
Banks has a fierce sounding voice which allows her to dominate and come across as fierce and mean. She makes Wyldstyle a strong powerful character yet likable.
The story continues with other characters, such as a LEGO Batman, voiced by Will Arnett, joining the team of heroes and LEGO Bad Cop, voiced by Liam Neeson menacing the heroes as he helps the now President Business.
Arnett has a great voice for Batman, but his character’s voice has no depth and comes off lacking.
Neeson’s main voice of Bad Cop/Good Cop is magnificent due to the Irish tone which contrast the voices splendidly. Bad cop’s tone is deep and menacing while Good Cop has a sweet Irish feel. To top it off Neeson also provides the voice of Pa Cop, Bad Cop/Good Cop’s father which does come off as being a much older voice. These three voice performance showcases how well Neeson can voice act.
The story has many moments where it is hilarious with cheesy takes on action movies.
The main characters are incredible and likable, even as Batman comes off as annoying and selfish.
The title song “Everything is AWESOME!!!” performed by Tegan and Sara featuring The Lonely Island is sure to be stuck in the audience’s mind for days after watching the film.
Warner Bros.’s “The LEGO Movie” comes out in theaters this Friday.