The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
The Lego Ninjago Movie
(Cert U, 101 mins)
For more than 60 years, Lego building bricks have unlocked the imaginations of the young and the perpetually young at heart.
New worlds rise and fall as the brightly-coloured blocks are slotted together and pulled apart, reused in seemingly endless combinations.
The spirit of reconstruction runs deep in The Lego Ninjago Movie, the third computer-animated adventure in the rapidly-expanding franchise.
Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan’s film lazily bolts together themes from The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie to explore a strained father-son dynamic against a backdrop of martial arts mayhem.
The riotous, barnstorming comedy of the first two films has been heavily diluted and a liveaction framing device featuring Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan as the owner of a mystical shop feels like an obvious stylistic conceit. ★★★★★★★★★★