How do you get favorite pop-culture heroes like Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Superman and Abraham Lincoln to appear in 1 movie, without spending a gazillion dollars and getting tangled in explaining how they got to be together?

Well, Hollywood’s answer is you can always make The Lego Movie. In case you start rushing out to make the sequel, be warned that even manipulating toy characters and colorful bricks and not needing fancy costumes and set didn’t come cheap, with a budget estimated at US$60 million (about S$76 million).

Back to our heroes, they’re deemed not good enough to stand up to the evil plans of President Business, whose alter-ego is Lord Business. That’s why everybody is rooting for the greatest Master Builder, who legend says will find the Piece of Resistance that will trounce the villain.

The trouble is, our Lego people have mistaken Emmet, an ordinary construction worker, for being the ONE who will save the Lego universe, where “everything is awesome”, frequently echoed by fellow colleagues of Emmet.

When a swarm of cops on Lord Business’ payroll gave chase to law-abiding Emmet, he risked losing his instructions manual and would have failed the mission.  Thankfully, ultra cool femme fatale, Wyldstyle (voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Pitch Perfect) arrives at the crucial time, mouthing “Come with me if you don’t want to die” in a tone sultry enough to set his heart on fire.

The signature pink and blue stripes in her hair rotate in the breeze (imitating the cascade of hair that always warrants a dramatic flip in human movies) and her smile was enough to make Emmet weak in his not so fully articulated knees.

Of course, the characters’ “stiff” behavior and movements, as opposed to the increasingly smooth and lifelike animated characters in Toy Story, are all part of the package, and help this to stand out from the animated movies pack.

Nonetheless, despite the novelty factor, the emotional connection isn’t as deep when compared to the recent animated hit film, Frozen. The close human relationships the 2 Disney princesses (Princess Anna and Elsa the Snow Queen) formed with other characters, even Olaf the snowman, made Frozen a remarkable tale that surpassed expectations and warmed the hearts of many.

The common storyline of zero to hero played out in Hercules and more recently 

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) is here, Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller of both Cloudy and The Lego Movie, continue to give the similarly insecure lead characters a chance to redeem themselves.

Just as no one around him saw the full potential in youngFlint Lockwood’s hobby of inventing, in Emmet’s case, too, his friends, thought little of him, saying, “We all have something that makes us something but Emmet is a nobody.”

Still, to restore faith in humanity, just when our protagonists desperately need help, they do get it. Lockwood saves the day with the aid of his father and weather intern Sam Sparks, while Emmet is finally encouraged by his friends to believe that he’s special too, thus igniting the spark in him to go against Lord Business.

Though the premise is not original, moviegoers will appreciate the humorous lines that add life to Lego’s quirky world. When Emmet tried to comfort Wyldstyle after her boyfriend Batman, decided to leave her, even his lines were comical. “If he can’t see how wonderful you are, he’s as blind as a…” he says, tickling the sides of viewers.

Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who were also behind the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), seem to show great interest in giving the lead character a chance to redeem himself.

In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint Lockwood caused a food avalanche that was bent on destroying the town and he gathered enough courage to head to the heart of his invented machine to shut down the system. While Emmet was thought to be useless, his friends on the journey encouraged him to believe in himself in order to be special thus igniting the spark in him to go against Lord Business.

The experienced cast of voice actors in the film like Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius the hippy blind wizard and Will Ferrell as Lord Business, builds a stronger brand image of LEGO and credibility for the animated movie, promising something more for the audience to look forward to.

Above all, head into another reality more exciting than how the Robinsons family traveled into the future. In the LEGO universe, immerse into dimensions from The Wild West to even Cloudy Kukuland where there are no rules, no negativity and no consistency.

Still, no one can beat Batman with his cliché lines. One of which is, “We’ll wing it. It’s a bad bat pun” and the cringing “He’s the hero you deserve”, a reference to The Dark Knight (2008) – “He’s the hero Gotham deserves”. As you can tell, this is a 180-degree turn of the suave character.

The experienced cast of voice actors in the film like Morgan Freeman as Vitruvius the hippy blind wizard and Will Ferrell as Lord Business, while adding to the cost of the movie, give it great credibility as well.

Another attraction whether you’re young or old is that in the Lego universe, from The Wild West to Cloudy Kukuland, there are no rules, no negativity and no consistency.

With the help of his newfound friends from Cloudy Kukuland, they join forces to plan the mission impossible of entering the sky-high lair of Lord Business. They get to be under the radar of the bad cops, thanks to Emmet’s invention of a double-decker couch that kept them undetected and alive.

As said by MetalBeard the pirate, “It’s ideas that are so dumb and bad that no one could ever think they were going to be useful”.

Rating: 3.7/5
Runtime: 100 mins
Language: English
Censorship Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Action, Comedy
Director: Phil Lord, Chris Miller
Main Cast: Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Craig Berry