The Lego Movie tries to have its cake and eat it, too: and it succeeds magnificently.
It plays off our need to fit in even as it exploits our need to feel special. It’s action movie, romance, and “coming of age” story all rolled into one. I have heard the movie called the first “remix movie” of our “remix culture,” which it totally is. It’s nostalgic and iconoclastic. It’s subversive and obvious.
And it’s a whole lot of fun.
In fact, it might be the best Justice League movie we’ll ever get (even the Flash makes a cameo).
I’m not sure what else there is to say except go see it. It’s the most I’ve enjoyed a movie since The World’s End. In fact, it has some interesting thematic connections with that movie. And don’t let the “theme song” fool you. “Everything is Awesome” may be the first hint that something is wrong just beneath the surface of things.
Space Enough, and Time 
“And don’t let the “theme song” fool you. ”Everything is Awesome” may be the first hint that something is wrong just beneath the surface of things.” I would agree. They were all being led about by an evil leader who had nothing in mind but his own schemes. But what I liked about all of it is that, in reality, we live in a world just like that. We’re controlled by businesses and people who do not have our interests in mind whatsoever. We are fortunate, though, that we are capable of being happy despite how negative it all might seem at a macro-level. We’re fools if we think that any of us is capable of really changing the world in such a way that we’re not all controlled by capitalism. So what’s wrong with being controlled if everything seems and feels awesome all the way through? How is real freedom any better than the happiness we feel in an ordered, systematized world? I would choose the blue pill (or whichever one it was that kept you in the matrix).
We have to live in this very depressing world no matter what, and we have a very short time to do so… then it’s over. I’d prefer to have the fucked-up but psychologically genuine happiness of the cave than to struggle with the depression that comes along with trying to emerge from it (which is itself impossible anyway, I’d bet).
Pretty early into the movie I found myself thinking: is this generation’s version of The Matrix going to be a movie about Legos? And it pretty much totally is. I’m really glad they took that kind of approach to the movie. Gives it a nice edge.
Yesterday a friend forwarded me a clip of the song. I thought that was odd considering the song’s context in the movie. She said that the song was written a good while before the movie was even an idea. And so I wonder, on some “meta” level, if something can be good even if it’s been co-opted.
I do agree with you that real extrication from the system is likely impossible. Too much of contemporary everyday life depends on it. Maybe the bigger part of “the fight of life” is simply trying to minimize that influence? That’s why I find The Hunger Games movies so frustrating: everyone is implicated in the system in some way, even if it is for the sake of their loved ones.
Ah, the cave. I understand its allure (and how it has been franchised out through media and other things so well these days). But “I want to see mountains again, Gandalf. Mountains.”
Saw this quote this morning: “The enduring message of Plato’s Apology: Philosophy that ceases to rouse and disturb the city has forgotten its vocation.”