Once cute ideas have become stale
“Everything Is Awesome” (as his theme song goes) in his metropolitan melting pot called Bricksburg. He has a goth pal named Lucy (a.k.a. Wyldstyle, voiced by Elizabeth Banks) and hangs out with Lego versions of superheroes old and new, notably a broodingly narcissistic Batman (Will Arnett). The good times are threatened by a tube of glue wielded by Lord Business, a joyless buzzkiller.
What made the original Lego Movie work was its renegade riffing and shameless hucksterism. Everybody was in the on the joke — yes, we’re mocking superhero movies and also selling toys! — and it proved to be so popular, it spawned sequels featuring the Batman and ninja characters.
Now we get The Lego Movie 2, still written by Lord and Miller but directed by Mike Mitchell ( Trolls), and it feels like we’ve become the joke. The idea is stale, the characters are no longer cute and the story is convoluted beyond belief, when it’s not being patronizingly didactic about how brothers and sisters just need to love each other and get along, you know? If they don’t, they risk the wrath of “Ourmomageddon,” which may be the single worst pun in movie history — make that the worst pun, ever.
The story this time has Emmett battling a much more annoying threat than Lord Business: invaders from the planet “Systar,” all made out of the junior Lego commodity called Duplo. They are goofy marauders, shaped like smiling stars, hearts and squares or modelled after the heroes and villains of teen-girl magazines. They refuse to leave Emmett and Lucy and Batman and everybody else alone. Constant skirmishing between the two groups has reduced Bricksburg into a dystopian junkyard now called Apocalypseburg. If this makes you think of Mad Max: Fury Road, you’re supposed to, along with innumerable other sci-fi and fantasy films I’m too bored to mention.
There’s a macho new charac- ter called Rex Dangervest, also voiced by Pratt, who sounds like he was practising to voice a Lego version of John Wayne, but failed. Tiffany Haddish voices a shape-shifting collection of blocks named Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi, who seems intent on altering Batman’s confirmed bachelor status.
Among the returning characters, Will Ferrell is reduced to two off-camera shouts. It’s the best acting he’s done recently. There are other characters — many — and a relentless series of cacophonous occurrences that dull the senses rather than dazzle the eye or mind. The theme song this time is called “Catchy Song,” which is deliberately designed to irritate. It succeeds. Given the choice between watching The Lego Movie 2 again or stumbling barefoot onto a pile of Lego blocks in the dark, I would happily choice the latter.