“Brickumentary” has a Lego up on most film tie-ins Documentary.
A flattering documentary about a single product can look a lot like an ad, and no one wants to get duped into watching a 90-minute commercial, much less paying to watch. “A Lego Brickumentary” runs that risk, and there are moments that may set off a viewer’s internal product-placement detector. But overall the movie is a fun peek at the birth of Lego bricks and their ever-evolving place in the world.
It’s helpful that the movie has a good pedigree, as opposed to being made by, say, the company’s public relations department. Both directors have some weighty work on their résumés, plus an Academy Award win for Daniel Junge and a nomination for Kief Davidson.
The narrator is a little gimmicky — a Lego man voiced sardonically by Jason Bateman — but he amusingly relays the history of the company, which started in Denmark in 1932 as a carpentry workshop. With the exception of some dark years when interest in Lego waned, the company has become a toy juggernaut thanks to all the fans who use bricks in inventive ways.
That includes the artist who recreates famous paintings with the blocks; the psychologist whose Lego program helps children with autism; and the woman who fills her entire living room with a model of Rivendell, the Elven city from “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
We also get a crash course in Lego lingo from a whole crew of AFOLs (adult fans of Lego), who congregate annually for conventions where people compete in blind building contests and dream up potential products. The most fascinating aspect of this community is the way it sprouted up without any help from the company.