Summary
Sticking firmly to the diagrams in the manual, this is one LEGO experience that is less about bricolage than it is about applying a branded message to a simple narrative.
LEGO is certainly not the first toy company to use cinema to leverage their brand, but they have become quite good at it. If the animated films that have come out since 2014’s The LEGO Movie have followed an instruction manual, then THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE makes little attempt to break away from this formula. In fact, it locks into place next to its stablemates as if it were another brick in the system.
In the land of Ninjago, six teenagers are trained under Master Wu (Jackie Chan) to defend the city from threats led by the would-be conquering warlord Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux). His son Lloyd (Dave Franco) is tormented by his peers just for his being related to Garmadon, but as a member of Wu’s ninja squad, must learn to reconcile the two worlds.
From the surprising live action bookends, featuring Jackie Chan as the owner of an antique store, to the gorgeously realised cityscapes of Ninjago, THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE is certainly one of the more visually interesting of the LEGO films. Coupled with the characteristic non sequiturs, and the fertile ground of a sentai/Power Rangers parody, co-directors Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan had all the ingredients they needed to build something innovative here.
So it’s a shame that the core of the film relies on the same troubled father-son relationship that all three of the LEGO films, including The LEGO Batman Movie, have fallen back on. At its best, it’s played for laughs as skewering of these tropes, with an ongoing gag about Lloyd’s inability to throw or catch. Yet even with a whopping six names attached to the screenplay, the running time is padded out with extended heavy-handed montages, and a cloying ending that doesn’t gel with the rest of the film.
There is fun to be found in THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE. This is, after all, a film that summons a live-action cat with the Ultimate Weapon (that is, a laser pointer). Yet these highlights are sandwiched between a series of relentlessly monotonous plastic-on-plastic mecha fights, at times turning the whole thing into a repetitive drag.
Applying the same cookie-cutter narrative to each of their distinctive sets, LEGO are becoming increasingly like President Business from The LEGO Movie, and failing to realise that good play is embracing notions outside the box. Unlike the bricks that the film is based on, it seems that one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.
